Watch The Hourglass
by Speedy1236
Summary: ... doors close when time is up. And once the door has closed on you, there is no escape. - An accident at a base of Dr Eggman's gets Sonic and Knuckles lost in space and time. Tails is left alone to deal with the consequences and has to get them back before it's too late. If they can survive that long, that is.
1. To Spoil An Experiment

**Watch The Hourglass**

_… doors close when time is up._

- Omochao; Sonic Adventure 2 –

* * *

**To Spoil An Experiment**

"Hey! Look out!"

Cursing under his breath, Knuckles reacted to Sonic's call just in time. He threw himself to the floor, sliding on his belly for a couple of meters. It was just barely enough for the machine gunner's fire to slice harmlessly through the air above him.

His slide came to a halt directly to another robot's feet; a compared to other models rather small one, humanoid, clumsy-looking, with red armor, called Egg Pawn… The things weren't actually excelling in smartness or combat power, but persistent when given a machine gun - but the echidna didn't give it any time to react to his presence.

Ducked down to avoid being hit, Knuckles moved around the roundish fighting machine and shot upright in its back, carrying the force of the movement bringing him back to his feet into a fierce uppercut that blew the robot's head right off its shoulders. It still kept firing, apparently the head not required for its operation. Knuckles snatched a hold of the bot's left arm, and, ducking down again, swung the machine over his back. Releasing his grip on it, he let it soar through the air until it collided with the merciless concrete of the next wall in its flight path.

The red echidna hardly took the time to watch it terminate its existence in a small fireball; the staccato of anew gunfire caused him to whirl around, ready to jump… somewhere. He relaxed for a second at finding he didn't need to. Sonic struck the robot shooting at him like a cannonball; the force of the impact throwing the Egg Pawn flying a way approaching the one Knuckles' last had taken as well.

A brief nod thanked Sonic for clearing his back and was acknowledged with a grin and a short wave before the hedgehog took off again, bouncing between the remaining wannabe killer machines at a speed that made Knuckles' head spin. Taking out a handful of robots barely touching them as he went, Sonic actually seemed to be enjoying himself. A jump brought the blue hedgehog up into the air and then launching himself at robot after robot without touching the ground anymore. A blur of blue. Knuckles shook his head. Sonic called the move 'homing attack', and Knuckles was damned if he ever understood how the hedgehog did that.

"Whaa!" The high-pitched yelp of the third member of the team pulled Knuckles out of a senseless state of just standing and watching his blue friend work. Spinning around, the echidna's eyes searched Tails.

They found the young fox a second later. Apparently he'd tried jumping a robot from behind, but the machine had fallen on him. Now the two-tailed boy struggled to free himself, his legs and one of his tails caught under the Egg Pawn that was apparently heavier than it looked on first sight. As if unimpressed by its horizontal position, the robot was busily shooting what ammo it had left without seeming to bother taking actual aim at anything.

Knuckles frowned. If Tails wasn't going to be pancaked sooner or later, he was still endangered of being hit by a ricocheting projectile. A look over his shoulder revealed Sonic to be occupied with one of the few robots equipped with laser weapons; the twirl of blue was hopping and rolling between short beams of neon green light.

At least the hedgehog was keeping what was left of the welcome squad busy. Knuckles turned back to Tails. "Hang in there, I'm coming!"

Running and dodging the aimlessly straying projectiles rebouncing off walls or ceiling, the echidna approached the stuck fox. Twisted in a not very comfortable or healthy looking way, Tails had reached out for the robot's right arm and was pulling and yanking on it, trying to keep it from taking aim at Knuckles.

It was clear who would win this wrestling competition, but even if Tails' chances to outpower the robot were roughly guessed very little above zero, his struggles still served as a distraction. Also a combat robot apparently could look only one way. It could shoot in two, anyway.

Another curse slipped through Knuckles' lips and the echidna stumbled, barely avoiding taking a hit. He still had rings, but he didn't feel like wasting them. Chaos knew what would come later…

Finally reaching Tails and his overly close robot, Knuckles slipped to his knees and slammed his spiked fist into the robot's left armpit. Attacking from above would have been an easier and much more promising way, but the force of his punch would crush poor little Tails. Dealt from below, the impulse given to the robot flipped it over and sent it flying a few meters. Tails, still clinging to the other arm, went with it.

"Let go!", Knuckles shouted.

The call finally made it click; double namesakes spinning Tails released the hold on the robot and hovered above it as it landed, shredding the momentum until hitting a wall. The red lights in its optics flickered, but it raised its weapon arm and moved to stand up again.

Only Knuckles diving into it fists first changed its plans.

Standing back on his feet, the red echidna watched Tails touch down at his side, a smile on his face. "Thanks a lot, Knuckles! I had some trouble with that one…"

Knuckles smiled a little. "Don't mention it, kid."

"Hey, guys!" Sonic's call let Knuckles turn around. The blue hedgehog stood in midst of piles of wreckage. "I think there are no more complaints to us entering this wonderful base, what do you think?" Sonic grinned.

"Nope, they're all strangely silent…" Tails giggled. Walking up to the large portal in front of them, the fox' fingers swiftly moved over a numeric panel next to it, granting them entrance now that the guards were taken care of.

Just as expected, Sonic was the first inside. Knuckles followed him and Tails, his eyes sharply gazing around. You never knew what other welcome treats you'd find behind the next corner.

The most outstanding thing about the corridor they'd landed in however was a big computer terminal tucked into the wall to their left. Immediately Tails was at it, cerulean eyes fixed on the multiple, slightly green-tinted screens. He'd made a keyboard pop out of what had looked like plain wall to Knuckles a second later through some act of techno wizardry. The echidna didn't really question it. The same way he channelled the Master Emerald's energies on instinct, Tails used computers and other kind of obscure machinery, be it some he built himself or Eggman's stuff.

"Found anything interesting, little bro?", Sonic queried, his left foot tapping the floor. Knuckles didn't need to ask to know the hedgehog itched to be going again.

Tails shrugged. "Of course there are firewalls and security protocols. I'll have to breach them, first…"

"Of course…", Sonic echoed. "How long's that gonna take ya?"

Another shrug. "It depends on how complex the system is, and on my luck. But I think once I'm in, I can get the system to tell me some details on Eggman's plans with the Emerald… and that could help us stopping him."

"Do we have the time to breach these… whatever they were called?", Knuckles asked, watching meaningless chains of meaningless symbols rush over the screens. Meaningless to him, that was. To the fox it all made perfect sense of course. At least Knuckles hoped that.

Tails shook his head. "I don't know, but I'd like to try. I think it's best the two of you get going on. Find Eggman and his experiment. Try to delay him. I'll catch up with you as soon as I'm done here."

"You'll find us?" Sonic bounced on the balls of his feet.

"Sure." Tails briefly turned back to the others and flashed a smile. "I'll just follow the trail of broken robots you leave."

"Ah." The blue hedgehog chuckled. "Good point. Then we're off." He turned to Knuckles, and the echidna nodded his agreement. "Let's get your Emerald back before Eggy does something stupid with it."

Knuckles gave him another nod and the two took off jogging along the blank, metallic corridor.

In a way, Eggman's bases looked all the same. So far they hadn't found the bright neon lights of self-presentation yet, nor the Eggman-shaped logos everywhere… but Knuckles expected that just to be a matter of time.

Sonic was keeping a pace he knew the echidna could keep as well, and they progressed quickly. Every now and then a robot was unfortunate enough to cross their path and was taken down almost too fast for Knuckles to watch.

_If someone had told me yesterday I'd be breaking into Eggman's headquarters_… The echidna shook his head, looking between the metal and the red lights all around and smelling the pollution in the air they were forced to breathe. Yesterday… Yesterday morning he'd been sitting on the stairway of the Emerald altar, his hat – a present from Sonic for the solstice they'd celebrated together some time ago - half over his face, and thinking nothing bad at all. In the evening of that day, he'd had the one Chaos Emerald he kept on the island stolen by Eggman. At least, it wasn't the Master Emerald, although Knuckles didn't understand why Eggman would go for just the Chaos Emerald.

His immediate chase after the thief had caused Knuckles to bump into Sonic and Tails who were also on his heels. They'd told him Eggman was about to conduct some sort of experiment to be able to use a great new weapon – so far unknown of – at any place and anytime he wanted. Or that was what Eggman said. Knuckles idly wondered how much more successful his plans would be if he would keep his mouth shut about them.

Without knowing any details, Knuckles had accompanied his friends; common goals and everything. So, now his hat lay on the table back at Tails' workshop in the Mystic Ruins, and Sonic and him were running for Eggman and the Chaos Emerald.

For a reason he couldn't entirely place, the echidna was longing for a reunion with his hat… Yeah, Knuckles really hoped tomorrow would be more like yesterday again.

* * *

The gentle, constant whirring of fans, and the occasional beeping notification were the only sounds to be heard. Deep down in his headquarters' center the 'baselord' sat surrounded by computer screens and holograms. It was a secluded, protected sanctuary, without much contact to even the rest of the complex unless specifically asked for, the place to think and work without interruptions or disturbances.

Ivo Robotnik's fingers absentmindedly ran over his moustache; stretching it slightly and twiddling with the hair. His thoughts however were focussed on the datasheet before him. The newest test report of his current project… Well, one of the current projects. A high-intensity laser cannon, its construction based on the blue prints of his grandfather's Eclipse Cannon and two devices of a similar sort he'd built before. Both of these installations had been put up in outer space. The handful of Kelvin in millions of lightyears of cold void around offered a marvellous source for the required cooling mechanisms… And mind you, the multiple generators, tesla coils, capacitors and wiring required a lot of cooling to not exceed their working conditions. Dealing with energies enough to blast their way down to the very planet's core asked for special measures.

Robotnik had still not figured out why that blasted thing of a mind control beam had backfired… Something had gone horribly wrong, but he had no idea what. None of the sheer endless amount of surveillance protocols and dozens of algorithms, solely created for that one purpose, gathered every second on all of his machines' status was able to provide him with an explanation.

He'd scratched it, dumped the event on the mental junkyard of failed plans. He'd accumulated a fair amount of these during the past five years… ever since he started. Robotnik winced at pulling too roughly on his moustache, courtesy of the not pleasant memories. Forcing his hand away from his hair and to the keyboard, he tried his best erasing the past failures from his consideration. He had practice, and apparently also a good amount of talent… He'd gotten forgetting defeat and starting over down to a fine art.

No, for this time, he'd decided to stay away from space travel. Even given the undeniable pros a construction side in outer space had to his purposes – unlimited space, cooling as much as anything could ever need and it came for free, little risk to have that horrid little hedgehog interfere with his plans while still in the making… well, at least less risk than at other places - but there were also cons. Getting the required material up there was a lot of work and needed time and efforts, the lack of gravity in space was a double-edged sword… and getting the weapon into a stable orbit while still being able to attack anywhere on the planet also was a complicated matter.

This time, Robotnik wanted to keep his cannon on the ground. Of course, this also wasn't the most perfect deal; even though it could be considerably smaller, it still wanted to be fed huge amounts of juice, and due to its make-up the prototype was big, heavy, and sensitive. Shifting it around was out of question without getting himself into more trouble; stationary would be the easiest to construct, but not practical for a weapon at all. A large airship, akin to his Egg Carriers would work, but attacking suddenly without anyone being warned by a big, easy to spot and not very fast aircraft was out of question that way.

How to transport something big, heavy and complex quickly over large distances? The answer was simple. Either via teleporters or... wormholes.

Teleporters worked, that was known, but their design was prone to mistakes, and they consumed a lot of energy… He wasn't sure yet if his other idea would consume any less energy, but it brought along the advantage that the device could be constructed as stationary – with all the pros placing it inside his base, with near endless maintenance resources and everything – and only the thing he really wanted to move would be moved.

On the bad side, he'd never actually tried it out before; and the first experiments on a new technology always brought along a certain amount of risk. Still, he'd decided to attempt it. After all, the scientist Robotnik wanted to know how it turned out…

A smile tugged on Ivo's lips and he stood abruptly from his chair. Time to get the experiment going…

Five minutes later, Robotnik entered his main lab; a huge hall full of half-finished machinery. Magnetic flux compressors, ring accumulators and other devices were lined up in several parallel rows of hundreds of meters length. At the very end of it all, the current main project sat tucked on top of an anti-gravity platform, in a perfect horizontal, keeping the sensitive electrics from being influenced even by the slightest movement Mobius' ground might do under the base.

Ivo moved past the machine, up a small stairway and into the observation room. Through the thick, reinforced special glass, capable of withstanding even a short chaos flux, he had a perfect view on his experiment.

Robotnik's fingers gracefully moved over the controls.

**Auxiliary ring energy source – ON. **

**All surveillance systems – ON and NOW RECORDING. **

**Main power supply – ON. **

A short glace down through the glass showed a satisfactory glow at the relevant parts. Robotnik nodded to himself, his hand hovering over the next button.

**Insert Chaos Emerald… **

**…**

**Activating Chaos Field Stabilizer… **

**Chaos Emerald inserted. **

**ALL MODES ENGAGED. Continue? Y _ N?**

The smile on Robotnik's face broadened to a grin. "Here we…"

**_"BEEP BEEP BEEP! ALERT! ALERT! BLUE EMERGENCY IN MAIN LABORATORY! REPEAT! BLUE EMERGENCY IN MAIN LABORATORY! ALERT!"_**

"What?! This can't be!"

Hands pressing against the glass, Robotnik stared down into his lab. The surveillance computer was right; there was that pesky hedgehog, progressing between the machines, accompanied by that red knucklehead of an echidna, and they were heading straight for his experiment.

"NO! Stop them!" Fingers now rushing over a second keyboard, Robotnik activated the defence protocols. "HA! Take this, pincushion!"


	2. Blast Away!

**Blast Away!**

"Whoa! Look at all this stuff!" Sonic felt his eyes widen and he slowed down to a standstill in the broad entrance to the big room.

"Yeah…" Knuckles' voice was quiet with awe, and something Sonic couldn't place. "Just what does it all do?"

Sonic's eyes roamed the seemingly infinite trail of machinery. Huge metal blocks, some taller than houses, sculptured in bizarre forms, designed to perform obscure actions. Blinking lights on some indicated the automatons were alive, while others stood still and in darkness. Nevertheless, the metal surface was glazed flawlessly, polished and clear of even the tiniest trace of dust. That was something Sonic had to hand to Eggman: He put lots of efforts into his things. That didn't keep them from never actually working properly… or looking totally odd.

The blue hedgehog's eyes stopped for a moment to take in the round top of one of the tall machines. Painted in a shade of red approaching the brightness of Knuckles' fur, with golden, round plates attached to it, tipped with another ball-shaped _thing_ designed with a painted face and an iconic moustache, it represented another case of Eggman's notorious self-presentation.

Sonic shook his head. In the eyes of a Mobian the huge, egg-shaped person with the ridiculously long limbs, the tiny eyes and the disturbing lack of fur wasn't anything of an attractive sight… but Sonic could even imagine that for one of Eggman's species that might be different.

Okay, it was _hard_ to imagine that, but he tried his best.

Still, did Eggman find his own form so nice to look at he had to keep designing his robots, space ships, containers and other stuff in his image? Sonic thought of himself as a rather good-looking fellow… but he wouldn't like seeing stuff shaped like himself all the time at all. Eggman's tastes however seemed totally different. Somehow, that weirdo had something for huge statues of himself.

Tearing his gaze away from the bizarre machine, Sonic let his eyes wander over the rest of the strange devices again.

Eventually he spoke up, replying to Knuckles' question although the echidna had surely meant it to be rhetorical. "If you want me to hazard a guess, based on past experiences, it will shoot stuff at us, explode, electrocute us, trap people inside, start glowing… or do something that's a mixture of these things."

"I could have figured." A rare chuckle from his side told Sonic his comrade appreciated his sarcastic tone, what was in itself a slight surprise. Usually, in situations like this one, Knuckles tended to be unpleasantly serious.

It wasn't that Sonic was all jokes and fun. There were moments that called for seriousness and putting the jokes aside for a while. Even happy-go-lucky Sonic knew that, despite common beliefs. The way it looked, they were heading right for one of these.

"If I'm not completely mistaken, there's some kind of humming coming from the end of this _dome_." Somehow, the hedgehog still couldn't keep from adding a notion of irony again through pet-naming the place. "If it isn't Eggman trying out his musical side, I guess he's turning on one of his strange machines. Might as well be the latest doomsday device, don'tcha think?" The hedgehog turned to his friend.

Knuckles shrugged. "If so, I bet my hat that's where my Chaos Emerald went."

"Sorry, pal, I got nothing to put in. The few bucks I got with me are my last reserves and will only be spent on emergency chilli dogs." Sonic flashed a grin. "And I don't like losing… I bet you'd win that one."

Skipping on Sonic's chilli dog money, Knuckles pointed. "I think we should be going. Better get over there before Eggman starts… whatever he wants to start."

Giving the echidna a nod, Sonic deliberately started walking through the straight gap between the machine blocks around, heading for the source of the deep humming sound filling the room. "If Tails doesn't hurry up, he'll miss on the party…"

Following closely behind the hedgehog, Knuckles gave another vague shrug. "He might as well tell us what it was we trashed after we're done with it. I wouldn't mind."

Sonic chuckled. "I'm with you."

By now they'd gotten close enough to the other side of the long room to be able to get a first glimpse of their goal. Eggman's latest invention didn't look that much different from a few of the other devices in here.

A grin tugged on Sonic's lips again. "Told ya. It glows." He pointed. "And there's Eggman!"

The wannabe ruler of Mobius was separated from them by a layer of glass. Apparently, he had noticed their arrival anyway, he was gesturing wildly at them, or at some of the monitors he had in front of himself.

_Doesn't seem too happy to see us… Getting smarter, are we?_

The robots that suddenly turned up all around them were at least a proof Eggman's reaction was quick this time around. "I almost think he expected us," Sonic noticed.

"Hm." A grunt was the only reply he got out of Knuckles.

Frowning, Sonic flicked his ears and shot a side-glance at the echidna, but still kept a good part of his attention on the newly appeared guard robots as well as their creator up there in his observer's post. "Something up?"

"The Emerald's here. I can feel it."

Sonic's eyes narrowed a little. "Fine then. As it looks, we'll have to get rid of these guys first."

"Yeah." For a second, Knuckles' eyes searched Sonic's.

"Alright then." The hedgehog nodded firmly. It turned out as a signal for both of them; Knuckles plunged into a small group of robots to their left, while Sonic took that as a cue to start off to the right.

Not given much space to gather speed, he concluded to have more of an advantage in the air. More space to move around. Sonic was not only a great sprinter, he was also a great jumper. Getting a meter above every robots' heads was a piece of cake. Taking aim at the one standing closest to him, the hedgehog directed his jump straight towards it, tucking his body into a tight ball and stiffening his quills as he went.

Honestly Sonic had no idea how he knew where he was going. It wasn't that he could see anything. Still, there was a _picture_ in his head telling him exactly where he was at the moment, as well as where everything else was. He almost never missed his aim.

In fact, he'd more often run into something with eyes open and looking, just through a momentary lack of attention, than he had crashed into stuff he didn't want to crash into while curled up. Maybe he was paying more attention to directions that way, because he usually only curled up in battles, and the adrenaline was great to boost his awareness. Maybe it was also possible that this mysterious, inexplicable sense of his that told him where he was spinballing or home-attacking was even more reliable than his sharp eyes. Sonic didn't know, and seriously he didn't care much.

With a satisfactory clanking sound Sonic's spines contacted with the robot's armor and he bounced off, heading right for the next. He touched down gently on his feet after the tenth contact, having for now cleared the space around him.

A quick look over his shoulder showed him Knuckles was doing good as well; a mighty punch planted right under a robot's chin sent the machine flying and smashing against the window Eggman stood behind and was watching the battle. To Sonic's big surprise, the robot rebounced off the glass without doing any harm to it. Not the slightest crack.

"Wow. New glass stuff, Eggman? Pretty neat," he allowed mockingly, hoping to provoke the human into coming out to personally join them. That always made the fights more interesting.

Eggman didn't reply, if he couldn't hear Sonic or just ignored him was impossible to tell for the hedgehog. The mad scientist seemed rather busy with his keyboards to Sonic. Probably ordering some more defence bots into the fray.

The fact a fresh bunch of them turned up in that moment proved Sonic right. Taking advantage of the free space he'd caused around himself, the blue hedgehog launched his body into a short sprint, ramming into the first member of the new squad full tilt. Soles screeching on the ground, Sonic slid to a halt again, watching the robot's breaking form hurtle through the air.

The flight this machine was clearly not designed for ended rudely when it collided with one of the glowing parts attached to the big, obscure apparatus that was Eggman's newest experimental doomsday weapon or something.

The robot vanished from existence in an almost disappointingly small pop, not even a real explosion… but it was enough to do some major damage to the weird, glowy _thing_ it had hit. Electrical discharges let hundreds of miniature lightening bolts and a fireworks of sparks flicker over the device.

As if in slow-motion, Sonic watched the sizzling damage, watched Eggman's face take a look of total horror, watched the crazed scientist punch his dashboards in what was looking too much like sheer desperation, watched him turn and run to what probably was an emergency exit in the back of the small room he'd sat in, abandoning his machines…

The sparks were now rapidly increasing in numbers, and it seemed as if the entire, big machine was starting to glow while everything around, the air, the look of the walls, was flickering, getting in and out of a focus it didn't have.

"Uh, Knuckles? I think it'll blow up now," Sonic noticed, surprised by the weird sound of his voice. Distorted, blurred. Just like everything else was blurry…

Knuckles didn't react; he stood and stared open-mouthedly at what was happening.

"Knuckles!", Sonic shouted, rudely shaking his friend by the shoulders. "This isn't the time for standing around! This is the time for running away, and fast!"

The echidna nodded, finally. Gripping his arm, Sonic pulled him along as he did what he'd said. Run. And forced Knuckles to do the same even as things seemed to happen a little too fast for him to follow at the moment. What was a little weird 'cause usually the echidna wasn't _that_ slow…

Sonic shot a glance over his shoulder as he bolted the way back they'd come, just to see something that looked like a bubble form, glowing in blindingly bright light, but still transparent as water, providing a blurry look to the other side of the huge lab. If it was an explosion, it was soundless, and it came without heat. But whatever it was, it was _fast_.

And it kept becoming even faster.

Grinding his teeth, Sonic felt unpleasantly reminded of the one time in his life he'd been not fast enough to run from something. Just a few months ago, the explosion or whatever it was that had swallowed up Eggman's amusement park plan had also swallowed up Sonic.

He'd run, ran faster than ever before, pushed himself beyond all limits… but it had not been enough. He'd survived only because the wisps, as energy beings unaffected by the purple sucking ball of doom, had rescued him and safely brought him down to Mobius. Fainted from exhaustion. Exhaustion from _running_. Sonic had never before considered it could come to _that_.

This time, it was starting to feel the same. Sonic ran, putting in everything he had. He was still holding on to Knuckles' arm, and he was still running past the large machines in Eggman's dome-like lab.

Still? He was going so fast… He knew the feeling of breaking the sound barrier, and he knew he _had_ broken it seconds ago. How could be still be in the room? He should be out of this freaking base by now! This didn't make any sense!

But… Nothing made sense. The ground was blurring below his feet, the room before him seemed to tunnel and twist, the ceiling looping into the floor… It was dizzying, and Sonic was sure this wasn't an effect of exhaustion this time. He'd ran not near long enough, and the day before had been not near to as straining as that last time.

Another hasty glance back made Sonic yelp. The blurry, glowing barrier was right there, right behind him.

Sonic panted, eyes narrowed to slits. He had… to go… _faster_…

From behind him, he heard Knuckles scream out in pain or fear or something else, and Knuckles _never_ screamed. A second later, Sonic's vision turned bright white, a pain as if he was ripped to tiny bits tearing through every fibre of his body. He thought he'd lost his grip on Knuckles, but the instant later he couldn't tell anymore. Could tell nothing anymore.

The world was gone. The floor was gone, and the air to breathe, and everything else. There was just the pain, and the light, and still, there was nothing.

_Everywhere_.


	3. Behind The Barrier

**Behind The Barrier  
**

"Gotcha!" Tails triumphantly shook a fist at the computer sceen. Last firewall down… Alright.

Grin wiped away by serious concentration, he started searching Eggman's databanks. Current projects… There were two, as it seemed… And one of them was being activated right at this moment.

A few orders typed into the keyboard opened several windows, one supplying Tails with general data on the experiment. The fox frowned. What did Eggman need equations on tunnel effects and a long list of various chaos parameters for?

Shaking his head, Tails moved over to the other windows.

One of them showed surveillance camera images from the lab, and apparently Sonic and Knuckles were already there, in a busy quarrel with a bunch of guard robots. Tails smiled, as far as he could tell from the looks of it, the two of them were doing pretty good. Robots were flying to all sides…

One, hurtled especially far after an impact with a spinballing Sonic tumbled dozens of meters through the air before smashing into what Tails considered some sort of generator supplying the experiment with energy. Obviously upset about the harsh contact, electric sizzles ran over the device, sparks flying. Tails' eyes widened, watching Sonic and Knuckles stare for a second before the hedgehog gestured wildly, pushing the echidna along, both of them taking flight. As they left, the entire image filled with white-hot light.

It took almost ten seconds until the image was back, static-disturbed, but clear enough to see the lab again. To Tails' huge surprise, nothing really seemed damaged… other than Eggman's experimental machine, which was smoking, the majority of its parts reduced to a charring chunk. Sonic and Knuckles were nowhere to be seen.

Worriedly Tails activated his wristlet-computer. Had they made it out? He should be able to find them… Sonic's watch contained a communicator and any traceiver could be located.

When the result of the search turned up on his screen, Tails shook his head. This didn't make any sense. If he was to believe his readings, and the strength of the signal, Sonic was thousands of kilometres away. Minimum.

* * *

There was a flash of white light accompanied by an odd, painfully tingling feeling tearing through his body. It lasted for just a few seconds, then Knuckles was suddenly falling freely.

The fall wasn't long; by the time the echidna realized he was indeed falling and considered trying a glide in spite of seeing nothing but whiteness and having not the slightest idea which way was up, he landed full length on his belly with a loud thud.

Knuckles grunted, concluding just from the renewed pain the landing had caused and the cold, hard and slightly wet way it felt underneath him that he'd crashed on some sort of rock. He blinked, getting up on his hands and knees, shaking his head in an attempt to chase off the headache that still hung heavily over his senses. The guardian wasn't sure if it actually was the shaking doing it or if it happened in its own, but the dizziness faded after a moment.

It didn't take the disorientation however. Knuckles carefully got to his feet, slowly turning once on the spot, trying to make some sense of his surroundings and of what had just happened.

The ground beneath his feet was cobbled; dark grey, rectangular pieces of rock in tidy lines. To his left, a wall from the same material stood up to about twice his height, its right end showing other walls had been attached to it, but everything left of them was a crumbled pile of small stones. In one of the spots having once been corners of the room he stood in, a sandal bobbed gently up and down in a puddle of muddy water.

"Where in the world am I?", Knuckles mumbled, crawling over one of the mounts of wreckage. He froze when he reached the top of it. "And what the heck happened here?"

The sight before him was a picture of destruction. Knuckles found himself overlooking the ruins of a city. Some houses stood in a half that was mostly unharmed, and then the second half looked as if it had been cut off by a giant sword striking from above, leaving the second half just another heap of stones and wood. Some buildings had fallen completely, here and there a single wall sticking out of the chaos, stubbornly having withstood whatever had come upon this town. In between the destruction, puddles from the size of a foot up to small lakes mirrored a muddy reflection of the ruins.

Knuckles could only stand and gape. To say he was shocked was an understatement. He couldn't believe what he saw. Whatever had happened here… if this was what was left of this town… what happened to the people living here before? A shudder ran down his spine and he briefly turned over his shoulder, glancing back at the sandal in the puddle, but he quickly turned away when his stomach made him feel like it wanted to throw up.

Slowly the echidna climbed down the heap of rocks, aimlessly following what had once probably been a street. Reaching the next corner of it, he found a small group of candles sitting next to the remains of a house, almost fully burned down, but the flames still alive.

Forcing himself to concentrate on his breathing and keep walking, Knuckles reached the end of the ruins and found himself on what apparently had once been a field of some sort. Secretly glad to be out of this dead city, the echidna walked another minute and then dropped down on the stem of a fallen, lone tree.

His head was spinning. Pushing past the shock and confusion, Knuckles tried to make some sense of this. Of everything that happened.

He'd been with Sonic and Tails in Eggman's base, trying to stop this experiment. There had been an explosion, Sonic had told him to run and -

Sonic.

Where was Sonic? Where was Eggman's base, his machines…? Where was _he_?

Knuckles groaned, forcefully shaking his head again. _Okay Knuckles, calm down and think clearly…_ He remembered the explosion. He remembered Sonic running. And then… then there was that bright light and the headache and this destroyed town and he was here and…

The echidna drew a slow breath. Bright light. Headache. Mysterious change of location.

Chaos Control.

A Chaos teleport, to be precise.

It was the only thing that fit something like what he was experiencing. Knuckles had never tried it. He knew the Master Emerald held the capabilities to do it. He didn't know if _he_ could do it, and he'd never been in any situation that made him feel an experiment with unknown outcome on the Master Emerald, the most powerful thing on the planet and subject of his destined duty, would be justified.

Sonic however… Knuckles had seen him use Chaos Control on the space colony Ark. The hedgehog didn't use it often; as far as Knuckles was concerned it was a complicated and straining thing to him, so he preferred relying on his speed when fighting.

Had Sonic used Chaos Control to get them out of Eggman's exploding whatsoever? Generally Knuckles wouldn't mind being saved that way, but the way things looked now… Sonic had used something he was everything but good at on him, and he'd ended up at some random fricking place lying in ruins.

The echidna ground his teeth, the confusion and disorientation and shock about what he'd seen slowly melting into anger. Anger directed at the person responsible for this mess. A person that never thought about what he did and risked his own life as much as that of people around him.

Knuckles' hands fisted. He'd find Sonic, and he'd make sure the hedgehog would never forget the points Knuckles would make on why you don't use something you hardly manage for yourself on random bystanders…

"You're so going to get it, hedgehog," he shouted out, agitated enough to not just grumble it to himself, but he hadn't expected an answer.

"Knuckles? That you? Help!"

The red echidna started storming towards the voice of the current subject of his rage, but the message that lay much more in the tone of Sonic's call than the words got through even to the enraged guardian. And it made him all the more confused.

Knuckles blinked, his temper not knowing how to deal with this new notion, and he struggled to make sense of it. Sonic was calling for _help_. Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog called for help. Help. Sonic never did anything like that. And now he did it with a _desperation_ in his tone… Knuckles knew only two things that had ever made Sonic scream for help. The first was the pink hedgehog girl Amy Rose and the giant hammer she used to make Sonic realize his feelings for her. The second was a certain wet liquid when it came in bigger compounds…

"Hey! Anybody hear me?!"

The anew call brought Knuckles back to his senses and he pushed the tirade of thoughts and feelings in his head aside for now. "I'm coming, Sonic!"

Running towards the direction of the hedgehog's calls, it didn't take Knuckles long to find him. He stopped at the edge of a rectangular hole in the ground, with its six by six meters rather big. Its walls were made of the same sort of stones the buildings in the city had been constructed of. Knuckles couldn't guess how deep it was, at the moment it was filled up to two meters below him with water.

"That's a reservoir for the fields," the echidna realized. "A well… or some sort of rain storage…"

"_K_n_u_c_k_l_e_s!"

The shaky call of his name made the echidna finally focus his attention on the middle of the pool. Clinging to a piece of wood for dear life, Sonic stared up at him, and the miserable look the hedgehog gave was enough to let Knuckles almost forget the plans of murder he'd made just a minute ago. The hedgehog's large green eyes were screaming despair, his triangular ears folded against his head so tightly it nearly seemed as if he didn't have any ears.

Knuckles called over to him. "How in the world did you get yourself there?!"

"_Dunno_! One moment I'm at Eggman's base and the next I'm here! Help me, Knuckles! _I don't wanna die_!" Sonic was pleading, actually pleading, and now hugged the poor piece of wood keeping him from drowning even tighter.

"Okay, okay, relax. You're not gonna die," Knuckles spoke calmingly, aware that while in a state of panic like this he wouldn't get anything out of Sonic anyway. Plus, the water most likely wasn't really warm, so first things first. Get Sonic out of the water, let him calm down, _then_ beat him up for getting you into this mess. This masterplan formed, Knuckles looked around trying to find something he could use to fish the hedgehog out of the huge well.

"_Knuckles! I guess I'm sinking_!"

Watching the emerald eyes fill with even more blind panic, Knuckles idly wondered why he would be sinking now if the branch held him for quite some time before. From what Knuckles could see, the piece of wood was still swimming as neatly as it had a minute ago when he'd come here, so probably Sonic's panicked mind was just playing tricks on him.

"Relax. Deep breaths, okay? I'm getting you out of there."

No reply other than a shaky nod.

Knuckles' search for appropriate fishing equipment ended fruitlessly; there was nothing he could use to pull Sonic over to the edge of the pool and then up. What left only one thing…

"I'll add this to the long list of things that are your fault, hedgehog," Knuckles muttered as he reluctantly pulled off his gloves, shoes and socks.

He slipped into the water with a quick header, resurfaced spitting out the stale, muddy brew and swam up to Sonic. "Let go of your branch and hold on to me, 'kay?"

Sonic merely nodded, but Knuckles took the fact he adapted a steel grip on him as enough of an answer. With a shivering, but elsewise unmoving hedgehog clinging to his back, Knuckles slowly swam back to the nearest wall. Another time in his life he was glad he had been born with sharp spikes on his hands… Sonic wouldn't have gotten out of this thing even if he could swim.

Knuckles climbed carefully; he didn't want to risk dropping his load. It would mean jumping back into the rather cold water and dive after him, and the echidna wasn't too fond of either.

Back up on solid and dry ground, Knuckles found himself caught in a death hug. "Huh?"

Sonic squeezed him even tighter. "Thank you, Knux, you're the best," he mumbled.

In spite of feeling rather intimidated, and the numerous plans for hedgehog execution he'd made up not long ago still somewhat in mind, Knuckles suddenly realized he totally couldn't be mad at him like this. "S'okay, Sonic. Now let go."

"Oh. Uh… sure." The hedgehog stumbled a few steps backwards; the distraught look giving way to one of embarrassment. "I just…"

"I know."

Knuckles could have kicked himself for the soft smile tugging on his lips. But it was true; he'd seen Sonic's inexplicable panic in face of water numerous times, and he knew whatever had caused it, Sonic just couldn't overcome it. Knuckles wasn't anything like a psychologist, but whatever problem Sonic had with water, it was something deeply rooted. And, for once, it couldn't really be Sonic's fault.

Still… "What were you thinking?!"

"What?" Now the hedgehog looked puzzled, one of his still flattened ears tipping up, and his head tilted.

"You damn know what I'm talking about!" Slowly Knuckles could feel the anger coming back to him as the awkwardness left him. "What did you think you were doing teleporting us… wherever we are here?!"

Sonic stared. "Hey, I didn't –"

"Of course you did! You used Chaos Control to get us out of there! And while I generally don't mind not being killed by Eggman's explosions, I _do_ mind ending up on some random apocalyptic field!"

"Apo- what?" Sonic's face was blank confusion. For a moment Knuckles seriously wondered if he could act that well or if his brain was still stuck at 'HolychaosI'mdrowning!'.

The echidna stabbed the index finger of his still ungloved hand at Sonic's chest. "You. Used. Chaos. Control!"

The blue hedgehog vigorously shook his head, drops of water flying from his drenched fur and quills. "Did not!"

"Sure you did! Admit it already!" Knuckles closed the distance between them, glaring into the green eyes.

"No!" Sonic still wasn't returning the glare; he just looked totally confused. "Do you really think I'd chaos control myself into the middle of a pool?!"

"Well, you screwed it up!" Knuckles gripped Sonic by the throat. "You screwed it up and now we're both lost, hedgehog, and this is all your fault!" He shook him. "Just admit it already!"

Sonic coughed. "I can't admit anything I didn't do!"

Knuckled let go of him. Suddenly he didn't know what he should think anymore. Even if Sonic was reckless, did things without using his brains and stuff like that… he'd never lied to him. Knuckles _thought_ he did a couple of times, but in the end it always turned out someone else had been lying to him, not Sonic.

"We'll speak about this later," he decided, turning his back on the hedgehog and walking over to where he'd dropped his clothing.

"Just where in the world are we?", Sonic queried from behind him.

Knuckles finished pulling on his gloves and whirled around. "I don't know!", he snapped, and Sonic just stared back at him, arms folded on his chest.

"Stop looking at me as if I'd just stolen your Emerald, Knucklehead!", he shouted back, apparently starting to get mad as well now. "I didn't do anything!"

Knuckles grumbled. "We'll see about that."

* * *

_Speedy's note: Sorry for the wait, hope you're enjoying yourself reading anyway. Replies to reviews might take a while longer than they usually do; I was skillful enough to injure my right thumb yesterday and at the moment it hurts enough to leave me stuck at typing single-handedly, trying not to move my hand too much. I'm a klutz with left... Luckily this chapter was already finished. :)  
_


	4. Emerald Entropy

_Speedy's note: Luckily this chapter suffered a lot less from the week I couldn't really type than I thought it would. Anyway, thanks for waiting, hope you enjoy what I have to offer now._

* * *

**Emerald Entropy**

He could go so crazy about this!

Tails' fingers clawed at the fur on top of his head, not that much bothered by his ears due to them lying flattened against his skull so long he feared they might stick that way.

It just didn't make any sense! He'd searched for Sonic and Knuckles, stayed at the base in spite of all risks getting spotted, and hacked into Eggman's systems; he would know if his friends were found. He stayed for hours, and none of Eggman's numerous machines, cameras and infrared sensors found a single piece of a quill. It was as if they'd never been there.

From all Tails could tell, Eggman himself didn't care much where the two intruders to his base went. Either he was fine now that they were apparently not lurking about disturbing him anymore, or he was just too occupied. Tails could almost take bets on the latter; ever since the mysterious explosion the doctor was running an incredible amount of calculations and reviewing all saved data of the experiment. Something had gone wrong, and not even Eggman having built the machine had any actual clue what it was.

After hours of more or less fruitless sitting around hoping to find something, Tails had copied the surveillance protocols and other data related to the experiment and the events in the lab, and looked that he got out of there before he got caught. Staying in Eggman's base that long was pushing his luck anyway. He wouldn't be of any help to Sonic and Knuckles as a prisoner, or worse, the interior of a badnik. Tails wasn't sure if Eggman still put people or animals into his robots, but he didn't really want to find out, especially not if he was to take the role of the robot's living battery.

Having to fly back home alone after they'd come to the base as a team of three felt terrible. Tails knew he didn't have reason to, yet he felt like betraying his two best friends, and it was a horrible feeling. Some part of him hoped they'd gotten out unnoticed and would be waiting for him at the workshop, saying they were hungry and asking where he'd been that long.

Of course they weren't.

Back home in his workshop in the Mystic Ruins, he first of all tried again what he'd tried with his small handheld before: track Sonic's wristlet. The much bigger processing power of his main computer should be able to give out some helpful results…

Tails found he wasn't completely wrong on this, it did give out some results. Results that were at least in so far assuring that there still was a signal, but even with satellite back-up he wasn't able to pinpoint it. It was as if the source of the signal kept bouncing around, sometimes it vanished, sometimes it didn't seem to be on the planet at all anymore, sometimes the machine told Tails the signal was generated inside of Mobius's core. Most of the time the signals he got were so blurry he couldn't even get these useless readings. Nothing made sense, and given the amount of interference he received Tails was considering that nothing of the results was of use to him. There was some kind of radiation strong enough to drown out any sensible signals.

The young fox didn't actually think the transmitter could be damaged. Other than the watch and radio, the transmitter had been constructed to withstand whatever Sonic could put it through. It was water- and fire-proof, could withstand electric shocks enough to kill people, it wouldn't mind vacuum and Tails considered it easier to crush a solid piece of rock than the pinhead-sized device. It used a Chaos Drive kind of battery two times smaller than the transmitter itself with enough energy to operate it for a hundred years.

No, the transmitter wouldn't be down. Tails had installed it in Sonic's wristlet without the hedgehog's knowing. He knew how little his brother liked his privacy; so he'd kept it a secret he could always tell where Sonic was unless he took off the thing. It wasn't meant to control his best friend, anything like that was far beyond Tails. It was his last resort in case of absolute emergency. It was what Tails hoped would help finding Sonic and getting him back granted he was unable to do it on his own, injured or stuck or something equally bad.

He'd never worked the receiver before. Just the one time after making it to assure it worked, and then he'd never used it again so far, promising himself to do so only in absolute emergency. Sonic loved hardly anything as much as his freedom, and Tails wouldn't dream of violating his needs.

Now, with Sonic and Knuckles having disappeared off the face of the planet without a trace, Tails figured he could reasonably claim the emergency to have come; but what he'd designed to be a help in rescuing his friend turned out not very useful.

Tails sighed heavily, fisting his hands and leaning his head on them. He didn't know what to do. He felt alone, totally alone in the world, like the world had continued turning without him and now he was out and on his own. Sonic and Knuckles might be hurt or in danger, and he had no idea how to help them.

A tremble ran through the two-tailed fox as he stared at the computer screens again. This radiation… He'd never seen it before, still he couldn't help but finding something in the structure of the spectrum looked like something else he knew. Something he'd seen before very often. He just couldn't point out what it was.

Abruptly he stood up. He'd first of all build a new tracking device. Maybe his old one just couldn't handle the signal. To be fair, in the back of his mind Tails was aware he was clutching at straws, but if he was sure the transmitter was fine, it had to be a receiver problem, right?

Of course, building a new one was also a great way to stop worrying, not about what was wrong with the transmitter, but what might be wrong with Sonic who'd been carrying it around his wrist. Tails shuddered again. No, he really shouldn't start thinking about that.

* * *

The silence between them was almost as cold as the wind blowing through his wet fur. Sonic wrapped his arms around himself, quietly walking behind Knuckles. He'd tried contacting Tails through the tiny radio set in his watch, but the thing seemed entirely dead, it didn't even show the time or date anymore. Either not water-proof or not explosion-proof. So, now all Sonic did was following his hostile-mooded companion.

It wasn't that he minded arguments; between Knuckles and him things like that sometimes happened on daily basis. Sometimes they got along great for weeks, then they somehow got into several disagreements in a row. So, it was normal, and Sonic quite often even enjoyed their confrontations. In some way both of them needed them from time to time, to let off steam and sort things out, but Sonic really would have liked to know what they were arguing about.

Sure, Knuckles quite often didn't actually approve of Sonic's actions or decisions, but then the hedgehog at least knew what irked the echidna. If he'd done something and Knuckles wasn't fond of his way of doing it, okay. He could defend his decision, Knuckles could tell him it had been stupid or irresponsible or whatever else he usually labelled Sonic's plans. In the end they'd both be a few bruises richer, Sonic would have learned a bit about being more careful and Knuckles a bit about that some situations called for taking risks. It was how it usually went, and in its own, odd way it was good with both of them.

This time however, Sonic had no idea what Knuckles accused him of. The hedgehog had no idea what had happened to them. Being accused innocent hurt, probably it was the only reason Sonic had not punched or kicked or spindashed Knuckles back on the field. He'd felt anything but like picking a fight back there. He'd been very happy to see Knuckles, thankful that he'd rescued him out of this horrid pond… but instead of just doing like Sonic had expected and telling him it was nothing and he should be more careful, Knuckles had thrown accusations at him.

He still felt hurt now, although he tried telling himself he wasn't. Knuckles had just saved his life and being insanely mad at him for blaming stuff on him he didn't do didn't work out the way Sonic wanted it. He was mad, yeah, mad and hurt and a little disappointed, but not as mad as he thought he _should_ be.

Aside of that, he was totally confused. Knuckles wasn't alone on having no idea where he was; and the one thing Sonic could understand about his friend's momentary temper tantrum was that mysteriously landing somewhere was quite an irritating thing. You'd think they were all used to it by now. Maybe it was one of the things you never got used to.

Everything Sonic remembered was Eggman's headquarters, something going wrong with his experiment, the mad scientist retreating in a haste… Something had blown up, and Sonic had run and he knew Knuckles had run as well and then… there was some bright light and he hurt everywhere, the worst being his head. Sonic had assumed it to be the explosion, then he'd suddenly fallen and landed in the middle of that muddy water in the well, luckily half sprawled over one of the loose branches floating in it.

Honestly Sonic didn't remember much between falling into the reservoir and being pulled out by Knuckles, it was all a panicky blur, but as far as he thought, he couldn't have done anything worth Knuckles' anger while stuck there, could he?

Finally pulling his attention from his not very helpful memories and the oddly behaving echidna to the actual situation, Sonic spent a real look around. Wherever 'here' was, it was deserted. It was a rather wide field, the occasional tree every now and then toppled, thrown over by something possessing brute force. At first Sonic assumed a storm, but when he looked at the deeply wet mud, the water standing in between hills and the piles of rubbish, wood and leaves gathered up here and there, it looked more like after a flood.

Looking past Knuckles, Sonic caught sight of a few structures that had once been buildings. He gulped dryly as they walked between the ruins, past a few spots full of candles. The silence hung as heavily in the empty streets as the few ghostly shapes of mist, and Sonic didn't like anything about it.

"My… Just what happened here?", he mumbled, just speaking to put something there to replace the silence.

"I don't know," Knuckles replied in spite of Sonic not having expected him to answer, for now the anger drained from his voice as he spoke quietly. "Whatever it was it destroyed this city and a lot of people got killed. I guess the survivors had to leave the place."

Sonic nodded, not near to appreciating the returning wordlessness but knowing nothing to say.

* * *

Ivo Robotnik slowly rocked back and forth in his large and comfortable chair. It was, of course, an invention of his own; floating through a complex system of ring energy powered anti-gravity engines mounted beneath the seat. A dozen of computer cores worked in sync to immediately adjust to any movement Robotnik made. Every leaning forwards to reach the keyboards, every shift of position theoretically upset the well-calculated balance of the floating chair and the programs had to take immediate action so the designer and user of the genial piece of furniture could go about his work without noticing any of it.

Of course, the Eggmobile worked on a similar system; it was just more balanced by the stronger engines it had in comparison with the chair. The Eggmobile or Egg-O-Matic still remained one of Robotnik's best inventions of all time; it served its loyal purpose for years already. Regardless of the numerous repairs and tweaks it had gone through, usually after confrontations with a certain blue hedgehog, nothing else had lasted as long.

His newest idea however wasn't looking like a near as successful concept. He'd miscalculated something… Robotnik hated miscalculations. He hated it when things didn't go according to plans. And he hated it if this terrible blue descendent of a spiked woodland creature was the reason his plans went awry.

It happened way too often.

Even if once more Sonic was to blame for a machine's failure, Robotnik had found out by now the Mobian hedgehog wasn't the only reason. It might have been a very unfortunate accident the robot the hedgehog had struck had been hurtled right into the sensitive energy converter. Okay. That was really bad luck… But the damage on the aforementioned converter _should_ have only resulted in no energy reaching the cannon. Instead, what had happened in his laboratory had been a chaos blast of a nature he had never seen before. Had not even thought was possible.

The thing that had actually failed, fatally failed, wasn't the stupid converter. It was his wormhole generator. The entire thing, the core of his plan. The effects he had caused had clearly done a lot of things… but they had not opened any wormhole, let alone any controllable one. _Something_ had caused the Chaos Emerald in combination with his machines to give out a vast amount of radiation, energy. For a moment, it had completely messed up the structure of space and time.

Luckily the effect had been local, just inflicted on the laboratory. Retreat had been possible. Since there was no trace of a hair or quill in the entire base, Robotnik assumed the blue pincushion and his knuckleheaded buddy had made it out in time as well. Robotnik snorted. With the hedgehog's notorious super speed, it should have been easily possible escaping the blow.

Screw the hedgehog having escaped. Sonic, for now, wasn't actually of any importance. What irked Robotnik the most was that his explanations, or attempts thereof, had to contain a 'something'. _Something_ had caused the Chaos Emerald in his machine to let out an unknown form of energy. _Something_. Robotnik hated that word. It was… unspecific, _unscientific_. He was a better scientist to rely on words like '_something_'.

Or that was what he liked to think of himself.

Those blasted Chaos Emeralds and their incredible entropy. It was what Robotnik still has to admit after all those years of research, whoever had named those powerful gemstones had struck a chord with the term, even though they apparently had been either suffering from a severe case of colour-blindness or had known nothing about gemstones and the terminology concerning different sorts of them. Emeralds were green, and only two of the Chaos Emeralds were green, if you counted the Master Emerald as one.

Still, the first part of the name they gave the crystals ridiculously fit. Chaos Emeralds. Chaos. Even after years of research, they remained exactly that. Chaos. Unpredictable. And that was what made them useless to him, even after all this_ experience_ you'd think he should have with them by now. Useless for any scientific purpose, useless for building machines that would need to _rely_ on them.

There had to be another way. The light blue Chaos Emerald, retrieved from the laboratory after the effects settled down and everything had returned to normal, now lay securely locked away in the base's main vault. And for now, Robotnik was decided to leave it there. Its own fault if it didn't cooperate.

He had decided to rely on rings. Similar properties, similar energy, but much less savage. Already now, he'd sent out dozens of robots to go around and collect the golden rounds wherever they spotted them appearing. His work, for now, was completing the cannon, and construct a power-storing device of a capacity that would be sufficient to allow the cannon's operation even over a prolonged period of time and still be small enough for transportation, now that the idea of teleporting it or drilling a pathway through the very structure of space-time had failed. For now, Ivo didn't feel like trying again.

Instead, his gloved fingers rushed over his keyboards eagerly. He would start with point one on his list, and there was no need wasting time. A planet was waiting to be conquered, right?


	5. Time Lag

**Time Lag  
**

Hours had passed and they had left the destruction behind. Walking through a more or less healthy looking forest, Sonic felt his spirits lifting again. His fur had dried and his mind was doing its best trying to forget the most of what he'd seen. He was good at that; it was one of the first things he'd learned years ago when starting to fight Eggman when he was basically a child.

They still hadn't really spoken; Knuckles wanted answers as to where they were and what had happened and Sonic couldn't give him any satisfactory replies. At least, granted that no-one said anything, they hadn't ended up in another argument. They just walked, and that was, by Sonic's definition, very boring.

In lack of anything else to do, and admittedly wanting to get answers as much as Knuckles did, Sonic let his eyes sharply roam anything they passed. The hedgehog spent a good deal of his time travelling around, so he thought he knew a lot of places all over Mobius and would probably recognize something sooner or later. So far nothing about this forest was outstanding enough to ring any bells, though.

The forest opened to another field and Knuckles stopped walking. Stepping up to the echidna's side, Sonic gazed over the hilly landscape before them. The air was still hazy with mist, the clouds hung low and you could only guess the slightly darker than sky silhouettes in the distance to be mountains. Glazing carpets of water standing between the gentle hills told him the flood that had wiped out the town they'd seen earlier had also passed by here, but maybe not with the same force. Directly beneath the hill Sonic and Knuckles stood on, a small group of houses nestled up against the bushes on the forest's borderline. A winding, apparently paved road led up to the settlement and lost itself in the haze, somewhere on the way towards the distant mountains.

"Do you think someone lives there?", Sonic wondered. Talking to possible inhabitants could maybe help them find out where they were and what was going on around here.

Knuckles nodded, pointing towards the houses. "There's smoke coming from one of the chimneys."

Looking more closely, Sonic had to admit the echidna was right. A small pume of smoke was floating upwards from an outlet in the roof.

"You're right. How about we go down there and ask them for the way to the next place that sells chilli dogs?" Knuckles shot him a glare from under a quirked eyebrow and Sonic smirked as he quickly added "Or anywhere else you feel like going."

Knuckles nodded quietly and started slowly down the hill. Sonic followed and they had finished almost half of the way when Knuckles stopped, causing Sonic to bump into him.

"Hey!"

The red echidna remained unfazed in spite of Sonic running into him. Confused as of this lack of proper reaction, especially from someone with a temper as bad as the red guardian, Sonic followed the direction of Knuckles' stare.

Down below, two persons had just come out of one of the houses, carrying heavy-looking bails. Obviously, it wasn't their work that had caused Knuckles to open-mouthedly stare at them; but Sonic had already covered the reason, and honestly he could understand his friend's shocked look. Long, thick spines fell from the strangers' heads around their shoulders in a way just like Knuckles' own.

The two down there were echidnas.

And… echidnas were extinct. Knuckles was the last survivor of his clan, the rest had all vanished throughout the course of history. It was known all over Mobius that there really weren't any others. Everybody knew that. But…

Sonic shook his head. "Just where the heck _are_ we?"

"I…" Knuckles could just shake his head in disbelief.

Of course, to him the sight of the two down there had to be a much bigger shock than to Sonic. The hedgehog was just confused; Knuckles looked ready to doubt his sanity.

"But you see them, too, right?"

Sonic nodded. "Yeah. Two _living_ echidnas." He threw a side-glance at his friend. "If we still want to find out what's going on we'll have to ask them."

"Yeah, sure… I just…"

"Come on." Sonic smiled a little and gently shoved Knuckles towards the settlement or farm or whatever it was. It was time for the hedgehog to make decisions, if he wanted to wait for Knuckles' brain to catch up, they'd grow roots here.

Knuckles didn't resist, he just stumbled alongside Sonic.

"Do you want me to talk?", the blue hedgehog asked, not really sure if Knuckles would have pulled himself together until they reached the houses. The echidna's head made a movement that could as well have been nod or shake and Sonic decided to just improvise. He was good at that.

They walked past a building that seemed to be some sort of stable to Sonic when the farm echidnas finally noticed their visitors.

Sonic waved a hand in greeting. "Good morning! Sorry to just bump in here like that, but we're searching for the way…" The hedgehog didn't know if the phrase had been anything like smart, it seemed a sensible one to him… if you put the little fact aside he had no idea what time of day it was.

Apparently the place's inhabitants didn't have any liking for his casual greeting phrase; one of them pointed a finger at the two newcomers. "Tana kizupo-ten opelug!", he shouted.

Sonic stared at him. "What?"

Knuckles at his side stood as if frozen, mouth open and eyes wide. Sonic gave up on expecting anything helpful from his friend at the moment.

"Tana kizupo-ten opelug!", the stranger repeated, more urgent this time. Stirred up by the shouting, a handful of other echidnas rushed out of the nearest house, gathering around the first. While Sonic generally didn't mind attracting a crowd very much, the fact they held spears, bows and arrows and were now waving their weaponry at them wasn't a very pleasing notion. "Tana kizupo-ten opelug!"

_I heard you_, Sonic thought, a little annoyed by not understanding anything the guy said. Although he didn't seem to vary his message much…

"Kazuto aka tana!"

Sonic's eyes widened and his head whirled around to Knuckles answering the echidna. "You can _understand_ that?"

Knuckles nodded briefly. "He says we're plunderers and vandals."

"Oh. You told him we're not, right?" Sonic turned back to the group of echidnas.

"Of course. I –" Knuckles had to interrupt himself when a pair of spears was flung at them. The red echidna dived for cover.

Sonic took half a step to the right, eyes firmly locked on the wooden projectile and let his hand snap out at it when it whooshed past him. The jolt the spear's momentum carried along caused the hedgehog to do one revolution on the spot before finding a fast stand again.

Sonic had caught things tougher to catch than this one; little rockets for example. A lot faster and with a hot end you better didn't touch. Being born with superspeed meant having the reflexes necessary for not running into stuff at this speed, and fast relexes were helpful not only for running and dodging, but also for catching anything you wanted. Sonic didn't really consider it a feat.

The group of spear-throwers however seemed another matter; for a moment a whisper ran through their lines and ten pairs of eyes stared at Sonic driving the tip of the weapon into the ground in front of his feet. When he let go, the wooden stick vibrated with the force of the move.

Briefly the hedgehog glanced at Knuckles who was crawling back to his feet. "Are you sure they believe you?"

"Umm…" Knuckles frowned for a second. "Sonic!"

The blue hedgehog fully turned back to the not very hospitable group. Apparently, the awe about Sonic's catch had passed, and now they were shouting and pointing their weapons at the two friends again. "Uh, do you think they're mad at us? I didn't even smash their toy!"

"I don't really want to fight them," Knuckles noticed, violet eyes scanning their opponents for anything that would tell him they'd openly attack. "Whatever they think of us, they might have a reason to mistrust people. Maybe someone was here that did something to them, before we came. I... wouldn't _want_ to hurt them. They're... _echidnas_..."

Sonic nodded. "Fine. We didn't come for a fight, anyway, and –" Before the hedgehog could go on, he had to jump aside to dodge an arrow aimed for him. "Okay, if we don't fight, we're outta here!" He held his hand out at Knuckles and the red echidna understood instantly. Taking a hold around Sonic's wrist, he was a flung along when the hedgehog ran off.

It took the echidnas just a second to realize the presumed vandals were taking flight, then they were on their heels, wielding their weapons and screaming bloody murder.

Sonic didn't push himself the least bit. He knew he was out of reach, and if an arrow should still reach him, the shield of air forming around him as soon as he ran, twirling the air in his wake with the downwash from his streamlined spikes and building a protective cushion before him and towards his sides protected him from worst harm.

Additionally, the guys on their heels were _slow_. To be fair, almost everything was slow on Sonic's terms. Still, he knew he could be out of sight in the blink of an eye. He didn't want to. He kept a pace just barely above theirs for a couple of minutes, not showing them yet his speed surpassed theirs with ease, then when he thought it was enough he gradually sped up until he could neither hear their shouting anymore nor see them when checking over his shoulder.

Slowing to a halt, he allowed Knuckles to regain his feet. "Jeez. Not really nice to visitors, are they?"

Knuckles shrugged, looking back the way they'd just come. "I guess they have their reasons."

For once, Sonic decided not to question that. "So, now what? Do we follow this road we saw a while ago? Usually roads lead somewhere. Maybe we'll find someone less unhappy with us," Sonic suggested.

Knuckles shook his head. "Maybe later. For now… Do you even understand what that means?"

"What what means?" Sonic tipped his head aside, purposefully playing a little dumb.

"They. They're echidnas!" Knuckles wildly gestured at him. "And as we all know, I am the last. All others are extinct."

"Well, apparently they're not… at least, not here." Sonic frowned. "Wherever 'here' is."

"Sonic what if…" Knuckles gasped as if the concept only just now occured to him. "What if this is something like what Tikal did to us? What if we're in –"

"The past?" Sonic folded his arms, watching his left foot quickly tap on the ground. It was a habit, and in a way he was sure it helped him think.

Knuckles shrugged, but his eyes were blazing. "Holy chaos, I don't know!"

"Yeah, okay, chill out..." Sonic waved a hand in what he hoped would pass as a calming gesture and nodded. "If we're time travellers, we have to be careful not to cause paradoxes and stuff…"

"Para-whats?" Knuckles blinked.

"Paradoxes," Sonic repeated. "Didn't you ever watch any of these movies? With the people ending up in another time and then having to find a way back? A paradox is really bad; I guess it destroys the universe or something. It'd be something like… killing your parents. That way, you prevent that you're being born and then you don't exist and –"

"If I don't exist how could I do time travels and kill anyone?", Knuckles interrupted.

"That's it!" Sonic nodded again. "That's a paradox." Actually, Sonic felt proud of himself for being able to explain it well enough for Knuckles to grasp the concept. Tails never managed that.

"Ah." The echidna fell silent for a moment. "So, how do the people in the movies get back to their time? Granted it applies to us in some way?"

Sonic shrugged. "Oh, most of the time they bring their time machine with them, or they have to find something that'll take them back home."

Knuckles grimaced. "Great. Then think of a way to get us back home, hedgehog."

"Me?" Sonic's ears twitched.

"Of course _you_," Knuckles snapped. "You got us here with your screwed-up Chaos Control attempt, so you'll repair the damage!"

Angrily Sonic took a step closer to the echidna. "Stop saying it was me! I didn't –"

"I don't wanna hear it, hedgehog! You did and we're stuck here and the natives want to _lynch_ us." Knuckles turned away from Sonic, climbing onto a large round pebble lying on the open field.

"And what do you think you're doing there, huh?!", Sonic snapped back at him, still tapping a foot as he watched Knuckles settle down as if he was preparing to start a camp here.

"We'll wait until dark. That's safer. While we're here, you can start thinking of a way out of this mess again."

Sonic drew a deep breath, swallowing his anger for now. He didn't want to fight with Knuckles, not now, even if the echidna was behaving like an ignorant idiot at the moment and didn't listen to him. He was right about the darkness, and a bit of thinking maybe wouldn't hurt… although Sonic felt like anything but keeping still right now.

Bottled-up anger at Knuckles, the still apparent confusion about their odd displacement, starting worry about getting home at all and no idea how to solve either of these problems… It was all pulling at Sonic's nerves and he felt anxious, nervous… and something else he couldn't name. His body wanted to run, to burn off some of the irritating feelings, and his head had no idea what it wanted.

It was all so very confusing.

* * *

The pre-noon sun was filling the hangar with bright light. Tails was leaning over a box of cables. He was almost done, just needed to make a few more connections and –

"Hello Tails!"

"Chaoooo!"

"Ahhh!" The fox jumped at the voice behind him and span round, staring with wide open eyes at the girl before him. Long ears hung down each side of her head and, a little smaller than him, she looked up at him with gentle brown eyes.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," she apologized in a high, but soft and careful voice, timidly rubbing the tip of her left foot along the floor. "The door was open and –"

Quickly gathering his wits, Tails smiled. "Hello Cream and Cheese! Don't worry, it's okay. I just didn't hear you come in."

"We didn't make much of noise, did we Cheese?" The rabbit girl giggled.

"Chao chaaaaooooo!" The little blue chao fluttered around her before flopping into Tails' arms.

Catching the tiny creature by reflex, the fox smiled again as he did as asked for and started petting Cheese. "No, you sure didn't. Maybe it was also that I was busy."

"You're always busy, Tails." Cream nodded her head importantly. "Do you show us what you're building there?"

"Um… sure." Holding one arm around Cheese who'd snuggled contently into Tails' fur and didn't seem to plan moving away from there anytime soon, the two-tailed fox gestured at what was an almost finished tracking device.

An hour later, he'd not only explained to Cream how it worked, but also all the circumstances having called for its construction. Talking about his worries made him feel a little better, and despite being two years younger than him Cream had always been a great listener. Tails didn' think she understood even a third of what he said, but she still listened, and that was all he needed right now.

"Where do you think Mister Sonic and Mister Knuckles are, Tails?", the bunny wondered, by now her chao sitting in her lap.

Tails shook his head. "I really don't know." He sighed. "I can't make anything of the readings I got, that's why I build this new machine. I hope it works better. For example, the power consumption is proportional to the distance they're away from us, that gives us one thing we know for sure even if everything else still doesn't make any sense…"

"But maybe it will and then we'll know where they are and can take the Tornado to save them!" Cream beamed, excitement twinkling in her brown eyes.

Tails wasn't as optimistic anymore. He had already given up on the thought it could be that simple. "We'll have to try it out…"

Cream nodded enthusiastically. "Then let's do it!"

For a second Tails had to bite back a laugh at the sound of this little girl mimicking one of Sonic's standard phrases.

"Alright," he grinned.

Another half an hour later, the two-tailed fox and his two eager but clueless assistants had everything ready to start. Watched by an excited Cream, Tails switched the power on. With a soft humming, the machine came online and Tails entered the frequency pattern of the locator in Sonic's wristlet.

"Now let's see…"

The moment Tails' finger pressed down on the button to start the search, two things happened simultaneously. The humming grew to almost deafening level, and all other electrical devices in the workshop went out. A second later, with a loud bang also the tracking machine shut down violently. Suddenly it was silent, and the puff of smoke rising up from the tracking device hung in the air above it, as if frozen in a moment of time, then the smoke dissipated and the space it left looked strangely empty. Like a hole in the air. Tails stared at in mesmerized shock.

Having jumped back with a small scream, hugging Cheese to her chest, Cream gaped at the now dead device. "Did we do something wrong, Tails?!"

Numbly the fox shook his head. He was rather sure he made no mistakes… "I don't know, Cream. I'll have to look at it all, then I can find out what happened…"

Or not.

* * *

_Speedy's note: With regard to echidnas being extinct, remember that like most other things I write and wrote, this story is set before Sonic Chronicles._


	6. Chaos Superposition

**Chaos Superposition  
**

"Could you stop this? It's making me nervous."

Sonic turned his head to where Knuckles sat atop a big, round pebble. "No."

The echidna groaned. "Nice you're interested in my well-being…"

"Great you're interested in mine," Sonic snapped, not stopping his pacing, even though it forced him to constantly turn his head to look at his companion while walking in circles. "I can't."

Knuckles swallowed a grunt. "As if you're gonna die if you stand still for just a moment."

"Yeah, maybe I will, you know?" Sonic glared at him. "I'm just gonna go _crazy_!"

"And that would be much of a change?", Knuckles muttered, but Sonic decided to overhear him.

"You don't understand! I feel like I'm… you know when they say someone has itchy feet? Well, I don't have itchy feet, I have itchy everything at the moment! My whole body's filled with… I dunno, but it wants out! It's driving me nuts! It's so… it almost physically hurts!" The blue hedgehog gestured wildly, trying to explain his problems to Knuckles.

"And is it my fault you're stir-crazy, or stressed out, or whatever you are?" The echidna folded his arms, looking rather annoyed.

"You're not helping with it, insisting we stay here. I so need a good run!" Sonic kicked the ground.

"Well, if those guys from a while ago find you back they're gonna give you a good run for sure," Knuckles noticed dryly.

"Puh! I outrun them going _backwards_." Sonic spat out the last word of the retort.

"Maybe you even will, but that doesn't change you freaking chaos controlled us to a random place in what looks like ten thousand years ago or something! This is your damn fault, hedgehog. You should practice your chaos teleporting before you use it on people around you that have much more important things to do that get lost at – wherever we are here!" Knuckles had jumped down from his rock while ranting and now stood facing Sonic, who barely managed to stop pacing before walking right into the red echidna.

"I didn't do anything!"

"You always do, because you happen to be a reckless idiot that doesn't think before charging spikes-first into death traps!" Knuckles' violet gaze pierced into Sonic's.

The hedgehog fisted his hands, trying to keep himself from punching Knuckles in the face right now and here. In spite of his anger, there was some kind of common sense left telling him a fight wouldn't solve this. Not now. Not this time. "How often do I need to tell you?! I. Did. Not. Use. Chaos. Control!" He waved both arms at Knuckles to emphasize his words. "And I can prove it!"

The echidna cocked an eyebrow. "Oh really?"

"Yes! Just think about it! Do I have any Emeralds with me?" Sonic span around on the spot once, showing himself to make sure Knuckles could see he didn't have any sparkly magic gems tucked away into his spines or something.

"Umm… no?" Knuckles tilted his head and still looked rather annoyed.

Sonic however had him finally where he wanted him. "HA! See? Now think about it: Have you ever seen me doing Chaos Control without an Emerald?"

"Uh. No?" Knuckles frowned. "But as we all know through Shadow it's possible…"

Sonic groaned aloud. "Oh, do I look anything like that hyper-chaos-infused-test-tube hedgehog-clone with the charm of an ice cube?"

Knuckles still frowned, but Sonic spotted a mock look on his face. "Well, technically… I can sort of see the resemblance…" Being shot a death glare, the echidna continued a little soothingly. "… If we forget about the colour, or the shape of spines, or the dumb grin that usually is on your face…"

Sonic felt the 'dumb grin' tug on his lips. "You barely avoided losing a life there."

"'Lose a life'? Just one?" Knuckles chuckled, a bit of the tension ebbing away. "So, how many lives do I have in this place, anyway?"

"Dunno, for the sake of our both security let's assume we're still granted just one each and be happy in case we're wrong, okay?" Sonic smiled, pointy blue ears twitching amusedly.

Shaking his head, Knuckles stepped out of Sonic's way and retreated back to his seating position on the large stone. "You're crazy... But I believe you."

Sonic sighed. "Good. Now that we've established that our being here is not my chaos-mighty screw-up, can we probably try getting behind whose it is?"

"Hey, don't look at me like that!", Knuckles protested. "I never did any Chaos Control teleporting whatsoever either!"

"Well, technically," Sonic mimicked, "You're the only guy I know capable of using this mega-huge thing of a rock on your island, so maybe you got a whole bunch of awesome secret super powers and aren't telling anybody." Sonic chuckled, but stopped quickly, shooting a glance at his long-years friend when Knuckles remained silent. "Have you?"

The guardian shrugged vaguely. "Depends on how you define 'awesome secret super powers'."

Sonic stared. "Oh… eh, fine. But you're sure you didn't – totally on accident of course – beam us to this nice place here?" Receiving a glare, Sonic shrugged. "No offence, just asking."

"Eh, right. So, if neither of us is responsible for our being here, who did it?" Knuckles' face turned thoughtful.

"Well, we were in Eggman's base. We'd left Tails at this computer terminal, and Tails wouldn't do anything like this." Sonic paused, for a second halting his anew pacing. "Hope little guy's alright."

"I'm sure he is." Knuckles smiled softly, by now having given up on his attempt making Sonic stop running in circles in front of him.

"What leaves just Eggman," Sonic continued. "And knowing him, he could be able to build a weird kind of robot or apparatus to send us here."

Knuckles leaned back a little, following Sonic's circling course with his eyes. "I don't claim being an expert, but from all experience has taught me about Eggman and his machines… Wouldn't a thing capable of teleporting the two of us who knows how far be pretty big and stuff?"

Sonic shrugged. He'd contemplated the idea himself. "Yeah, you got a point there. But really, there were a bunch of weird looking things in there, with glowiness and everything. I've learned to mistrust everything that glows, especially if Eggman's involved with it."

Slowly, the echidna nodded his head. "I see what you're getting at. Neither of us is quite the technical genius; I must admit to me most of his things look all the same."

The blue hedgehog chuckled, sheepishly rubbing the base of his neck. "Same here. I never really cared, actually. I see an Eggman machine trying to kill me and bust it. That's the deal."

"So, maybe he really had something that made us disappear and land here. Unfortunately, this doesn't help us much." Knuckles shot Sonic a stern look. "How do we make it get us back?"

Once again, all Sonic could do was shrug. "Y'know, maybe it helps us if we find out where we are, first?"

"I'm not sure, really." Knuckles shifted his weight uncomfortably. "Some of the buildings looke like the ones I remember seeing during the visions I had when Tikal came to help us against Chaos."

Sonic scratched his head. "I mostly saw the Temple of Chaos in flames, but it was looking… less damaged than it does now. Maybe you should improve your house-keeping. – Just joking."

Merely blinking at Sonic's comment, the red echidna just kept talking. "I saw more than that. I found a tunnel through which you could go to what looked like part of a city, with lots of buildings and all that. And a lot of echidnas…"

Stopping when a flight of sympathy stroke him for his friend being the last of his kind, Sonic looked up at him, trying to get back to the actual subject matter. "You could walk from the Temple of Chaos to a big kind of city?"

Knuckles nodded. "Yeah. Nowadays there's only a forest with a few walls hidden under bushes and moss up until the edge of the island…" He stopped, staring at the blue hedgehog. "The space from the meadow hosting the temple up to the edge of Angel Island is not near big enough for a city like that."

Folding his arms, Sonic watched his foot tapping the ground for a moment before focussing on Knuckles again. "You once said something like that Angel Island didn't always fly around. I mean, that makes sense; islands don't naturally fly around, do they? Sure, platforms do, Tails says because of rings appearing inside the ground or something, I didn't get it."

Running a hand through his dreads, Knuckles seemed thoughtful again. "Angel Island floats by the power of the Master Emerald, and the Emerald is a relic told to be older than any civilization, maybe older than the world itself."

"The world itself?", Sonic interrupted. "How is that even possible? How can the Emerald exist if the world doesn't?"

Knuckles shrugged, giving a grunt of annoyance. "Heck, Sonic, I don't know! Now do you want to hear it or not?"

Nodding vigorously, the hedgehog smiled. "Yes, Sir. I'll pipe down from now on and be a good kid!"

Shaking his head, the echidna smirked, but continued. "Fine. The Chronicles I found in Angel Island's ancient library aren't too sure on the subject. Some chroniclers claim the island to have been levitating in the skies since the beginning of time. Others speak of a natural catastrophe – the impact of a big comet – that threatened the survival of our society and some chose to build a refuge in the sky to escape it, while others stayed on the surface and died. Some say something that sounded like an experiment or weapon project gone wrong to me caused a backfiring of Master Emerald power that ripped the island out of the planet's surface and made it fly; and there are some that claim it to be a result of Perfect Chaos' wrath that came upon Pachacamac's clan."

For a moment given the heard some thought, Sonic nodded his head. "Well, the majority seems to think something caused it to fly, so maybe we could be at a time before that first time of it flying around and what looked familiar to you is a part of Angel Island before it became Angel Island?" He frowned in thought. "Wow, when it got ripped out of the ground, it must've left quite a hole behind. Maybe it's a lake now or something?"

Knuckles nodded, looking fascinated and disturbed at the same time. "Yeah, possible. If we could prove for sure either what year it is or if we can clearly identify a building that belongs to Angel Island or something, we know at least where we are." He paused, looking sober again. "Although I don't see how that'll help us."

Sonic shrugged. "Stop being so negative. We'll see about that later! One step at a time, right?" The doubtful look he met however didn't really make the hedgehog think his friend agreed with his optimism.

* * *

"Yes! That's it!" The triumphant cry echoed through the wide room with its metallic walls. Robotnik's hand slipped down to press a rather small, green button on his large desk, then he leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over the belly whose shape had given him his nickname, and waited.

Just a minute passed until the door of the planning room slid open almost soundlessly and a small robot walking inside, the glowing optics on the round head fixed on Robotnik and its left hand held up, balancing a silver plate. The little robot stopped next to his creator's seat, and the scientist took the tablet, placed it on the table and gave his small creation a pat on the round head. It let out a small, beeping noise, before folding into a small heap next to his seat and table, awaiting further commands in standby.

Robotnik took a sip of the warm coffee in the big mug, of course shaped in his own design, the handle a stylized nose with a moustache painted on the cup around the handle, then he picked up the large sandwich lying next to it and allowed himself a huge bite.

He looked onto the concept plan on the screen in front of him while he chewed his lunch. Finally, the device to move the large cannon was ready for the assembly. As soon as he finished eating, he would see to the construction of the robot vehicle, strong and with impressive off-the-road capabilities. The teleportation idea had failed him, and he had decided to rely to good old fashioned, but reliable methods for now. Sometimes the tradional way was the best, even for machines to help you conquer the world.

And in just a short time, he would be able to test the cannon in the open for the first time. Granted the power cells would be at least in a beta state at that time, so they were his next focus after the vehicle.

Robotnik finished his sandwich and reached for the mug again, slowly enjoying the coffee. No matter the drawbacks of a few days ago, at the moment everything was going according to plans. Plans that had needed changing, but no matter. In a few more days, Mobius better prepared for a new ruler and no election. He put down the empty coffee mug and laughed.

* * *

Groggily Tails let his head drop onto his desk, or more specifically onto the pile of paper scribbled full of equations and calculations. Cream had left in the afternoon, knowing that she couldn't help him anyway.

The fox sighed, forcing himself to sit upright again and once more face the paper. He knew by now that his tracking device had short-circuited because of too high energy demands leading to an unwanted voltage peak. He also knew that this meant wherever his two friends were now was very far off; but before he knew exactly where they were and most importantly how to get them back, he couldn't start any real action.

He was running in circles. Had been doing so ever since he'd started. Tails sighed again. This was one of the disadvantages of being the smartest guy in their group. Scientifically smart, anyway. It wasn't that the others were dumb.

Sonic could analyze a sudden situation, his own momentum and the effects a movement he did would have on whatever he was doing within the blink of an eye. It would take Tails at least minutes to calculate all of that. Sonic knew all these things without calculating. It was a special sort of smart.

The blue hedgehog was also pretty quick understanding things. If he listened, anyway. The main problem with Sonic and understanding stuff was that he hardly ever listened because something shiny or more amusing was always distracting him from actually using his intelligence. Sometimes Tails was sure Sonic would understand how his inventions worked, or even did, but didn't take the time to do anything with this knowledge.

Tails was also sure that Knuckles was actually quite intelligent, or at least not as stupid as people thought he was occassionally. He was just like a fish out of the water outside his island and things he knew. Still, Knuckles was a walking encyclopaedia for everything concerning history. Name something and he knew at least a bit about it. On some occasions Tails had wondered how many languages the echidna understood. He could read hieroglyphs nobody else could, and spoke at least an old echidna language and the language everybody around spoke. It was a mystery to Tails how he'd learned speaking at all, growing up without people around.

Knuckles also knew a lot about herbs to be used for healing, or about the treatment of injuries as well. Tails had never asked how he knew these things. Probably read up on it while living all on his own in old texts left behind by his extinct ancestors. That would mean Tails and Knuckles had a certain sense of curiosity in common, and a liking to reading stuff.

Still, his two friends weren't there. Not that they would be of much help… and if they were here, the help wouldn't be needed…

Brushing the papers aside in a gesture of defeat, Tails crossed out some more names from the mental list of friends and allies. Cream was still too small to know anything but flowers and chao; Big was friendly but not the smartest; Amy had only one thing on her mind and it wasn't science; Shadow or Rouge could hardly be considered even allies and Tails doubted either of them would be thrilled to help him out. Blaze wouldn't hesitate to do what she could to help him, but she was in her own dimension… even farther off than Knuckles and Sonic… Well, hopefully.

Tails groaned. He needed someone to discuss his equations with, someone giving actual input. He was stuck; a little brainstorming would probably help out.

Slowly walking towards the window, the little fox realized he'd sat over his work long enough for the stars to come up. Now billions of small lights twinkled down on Mystic Ruins.

… Stars… Tails' drooping namesakes almost jumped off from dragging across the floor and started to twirl exitedly behind his back. Stars… Why had he forgotten about his scatter-brained, but in his own way genial buddy? A grin slipped onto the two-tailed fox' face as he raced for his phone. He didn't waste a look to read the clock. Midnight was the perfect time to call this guy.

* * *

The clouds of earlier had lifted, allowing the moon to pour its pale light over the landscape. Sonic watched the faintly glowing shapes the remaining clouds formed against the background of the starry sky. There wasn't much wind either.

Returning his gaze to the path, Sonic found, in spite of the nervous-making situation and everything, the place bore an utter beauty. The moonlight caused the stony pavement of the road to glaze in silvery light, an effect that was even more visible on the wetness of the grass or the occasional trees. Far in the distance, what he'd already guessed before to be mountains was now a dark grey shape, the few clearly recognizable summits surrounded by rings of mist shining in a soft grey colour.

They were currently headed for these mountains and a short glance to his left told Sonic Knuckles was also looking at them. Another few minutes passed in silence, both of them just walking and taking in what was to be seen, but the atmosphere was actually rather relaxed between them. Sonic had gotten Knuckles to understand and accept their being here wasn't up to anything he did, and that the echidna didn't blame anything on him anymore was enough for Sonic to forget the whole thing.

Another glace at his friend got Sonic to spot a small frown on his features. In itself, that wasn't so abnormal, sometimes the hedgehog used to think Knuckles frowned as much as Sonic himself grinned or smiled. But over the years of knowing each other, Sonic had learned to read the guardian, his eyes, his face, the little twitch of a muscle. Most often it was all you would get out of him, but having gotten quite a good observer for these things, Sonic could tell when Knuckles grinned inwardly while his face would just show a faint smile. Just the same way he could recognize a Knuckles-smile through the twinkle in his eyes, they were also a good way to tell other emotions. Anger made the violet color of his eyes appear a little darker, harder. Fear made his eyes widen, and if just a tiny bit. Confusion usually caused small motions of his eyebrows, something you could generally observe if the echidna was thinking hard. He was now, his jaw working almost unnoticeably and those purple eyes moving over the mountains at the horizon.

Feeling his own eyebrows lower a little, Sonic studied his friend's expression for another moment, contemplating whether or not he should ask him what was on his mind. Experience had taught him though quite often a question like that would gain not much more than a comment to mind his own business. Still, it had also taught him that Knuckles, granted he really had some problems to think about, would eventually speak. Sometimes it took days or weeks until he spilled, but something told Sonic he wouldn't need to wait that long.

Deciding to stay silent and wait things out for once, Sonic returned his attention to himself. With the argument solved and given they were finally on the move again, he actually felt a lot better than before. Sure, he would like to know what was going on as much as Knuckles, but it wasn't really his style worrying much. If they had landed in another dimension or time, fine. It wasn't that something like that had never happened before.

Tails and himself had once stranded in Blaze's world; they still didn't really know how they'd landed there. In the end, they'd found a way to get back. Sonic himself had been stuck in a story book, not just once, but twice, and he'd always gotten back. Then, Dr. Eggman had split the planet into pieces upon unleashing the Dark Gaia monster from the planet's core. Not as expected, in the end the planet had been fully restored.

No, given his experiences, landing in a strange place through strange circumstances couldn't actually unsettle Sonic anymore. It made him think, and probably a little worried, but in the end he thought this just helped him finding a way to get things fixed again.

He just didn't know how. Yet. But seriously… wouldn't it be really boring to know everything right in the beginning of something? Sonic found he could very well just see what happened and then make the best of it.

So, the hedgehog felt pretty much in peace with himself and the world by the time his ears caught the sound of Knuckles clearing his throat. "Sonic?"

Looking back at him, Sonic smiled a little. Sooner than he thought… "Yeah?"

"You remember what we said about Angel Island?", Knuckles started, still not looking at Sonic.

"Sure. I don't know how I got the idea to ask for it anymore and I'm not sure if anything made sense, but I remember." He chuckled and spotted a brief smile dart over Knuckles' serious face.

"I guess we were talking about something totally different…" The red echidna nodded. "Still… Do you see those mountains?"

Sonic grinned. "They're a little big to miss, don't you think? I mean, they're everywhere… over there."

"Sure." Knuckles grunted. "But look at these to the left. The ones that are somewhat smaller and more conical?"

Following the direction of Knuckles' outstretched arm, Sonic finally spotted what the echidna meant. Closer to them than the rest of the mountains a group stuck out, separated not only by what could very well be a couple miles from the rest of the mounts, but they were also distinctively less high and a little rounder. "Yeah, I got them. What's up with them?"

"Take the second summit from the right and look about a finger-broad lower. What do you see?"

Against the dark blue sky, the mountain appeared like a giant form in concrete blackness. Just like for nearly all natural things, its slopes weren't straight, right were Knuckles' finger pointed there was a sharp, tooth-shaped bump.

Sonic narrowed his eyes. "There's a ledge or a cliff of sorts."

"Yeah." Knuckles nodded again. "I'm rather sure by now I have stood on this cliff overlooking the forest below more often than I can count."

Sonic's head snapped to his friend. "You mean…?"

"I wouldn't say anything if I wasn't pretty sure." Knuckles' eyes finally moved away from the distance to focus on Sonic. "And the Master Emerald is there. I guess…"

Now it was Sonic's turn to frown. "You _guess_? Since when do you need _guessing_ when it comes to this thing? You _speak_ shiny rock, don't you? Sometimes I'm tempted to think you understand it better than me. Or someone else, for that matter."

Knuckles shook his head and there was something like desperation in his eyes now. "I don't know. I think I feel it, but it's nothing like it used to. It's nothing like anything I ever felt. I've tried, really. I've tried to feel it, tried to hear it. Sometimes, when I really concentrate on it, I can hear it _sing_. Without a sound, just in my mind, but it sings.

"I can't hear it now. I can tell it is there, somewhere. I can tell it's the Master Emerald and not a Chaos Emerald or something, but that's all. I can't draw on it, I can't _reach_ it. It's a little like it was when it was broken, but… different. When it was in pieces, I couldn't feel anything of its moods, because only the pieces existed and all they did was _scream_. There was nothing else the energy could do. It was broken.

"This time… It's not about the Emerald. It's me. Something is wrong with me and… It's like someone put blindfolds on me, Sonic. I know it is there but I can't see it. It's like… with this milky glass you have in some of your windows. You can look through and see the colours of what's on the other side, but you can't really _see_ it." As if exhausted after speaking so much, Knuckles fell silent, shoulders slumped and eyes down.

Sonic watched him for a second, doing his best to make sense of what he'd been told. While he couldn't feel much of the Master Emerald, not in any way like Knuckles at least, he could do so with the Chaos Emeralds, and the echidna's words made at least a bit of sense. Still, Sonic knew his red friend possessed a sense for chaos energy, especially for the Master Emerald, that had to be dozens of times sharper than his. Detaching Knuckles from the Master Emerald was as bad as taking Sonic's speed. In so far, Sonic could understand his despair.

He sighed, trying to develop something approaching an explanation. "I don't really know anything about this, but we already covered we're either in a different world than ours, one that still has other echidnas. Or at least we're in a different time. No matter which of them is closer to the truth, we don't belong here. If this really is another world or time, it's possible the Chaos Emeralds and the Master Emerald are different from what we're used to." Sonic smiled weakly to himself, proud of how Tails-like-sounding a reasonable explanation he found there.

Knuckles lifted his gaze back up at him. "We need to know."

Sonic nodded. "Agreed. The quicker we find out what's going on, the quicker we'll find a way back to where things are the way they're supposed to be."

"Yeah…" Knuckles sighed.

Looking at him for another moment, Sonic pointed at the distance. His feet were still itching, and he'd dealt with the slow pace long enough now.

"What do you say if we speed things up a little?"

Knuckles smiled, even though rather grimly, and nodded.


	7. Since When Do Islands Float?

_Speedy's note: For better readability, you will be presented the English dub (translated echidna language in italics) of this chapter._

* * *

**Since When Do Islands Float?**

After significantly closing in on their set goal, Knuckles insisted they slowed down again. No matter how much he itched to get some answers, he considered it was better they didn't run into random people, and there had to be people somewhere around here…

As if to prove the red echidna right, a sudden, sharp voice sounded from out of the shadows and the two friends were surrounded by armed guards. "Nipok!"

Next to Knuckles, Sonic had dropped into fighting stance faster than anyone else could think let alone react, ready to jump the first best echidna around and defend himself.

"Sonic, wait!", Knuckles called, and turned to the guards.

Suspicious eyes fixed on Sonic and Knuckles, one of the echidnas stepped forwards, repeating his command. "_Halt! Who are thee and where are thee headed at this nightly time?!"_

"_Excuse the inconvenience, Sire_," Knuckles started, bowing slightly. "_My name is… uh…_ Knux _and this friend of mine is called by the name of… _Blue. _We have come a long way from… um… the kingdom of the.. big_ rollercoasters." The guard's piercing eyes still looked suspicious and Knuckles really hoped no-one would notice how much nonsense he talked here.

_"I have not heard of this land to the day,"_ the leader of the guards noticed, his frown clearly visible in the moonlight.

_"I am not surprised, noble guard, for it is very far, far away."_ Knuckles hoped he sounded believable. _"I have travelled to this kingdom to explore the unknown zones. I spent years studying the natives' culture that is very different from ours."_ At least the last statement wasn't entirely a lie. _"Now I have taken the long journey to return home."_

The guard pointed at Sonic, and Knuckles' mind raced to find a plausible reply to the unspoken question.

"Blue _is his people's greatest warrior; his fine deeds are famous all among the kingdom._" Boy, that hurt… "_In return to having been allowed to live with his people, I will show him the great capital_."

"_The last war is just over, the great floods have taken thousands of lives and the echidna people have suffered a lot. You must understand a stranger cannot be trusted into the sacred district_."

Knuckles nodded. "_Of course I do understand; we have seen a lot of destruction on our way here… But I can give you my word on my friend's intention. I owe my life to him_." The latter also wasn't a lie, and while Knuckles usually didn't speak of things like this too much, he also knew honour was one, if not the biggest of values in the old society, and nothing put you deeper in someone else's dept than if they had saved your life, home or reputation.

Luckily for Knuckles, the guard leader seemed to follow this philosophy; his eyes turned less piercing and he gestured at his fellows to lower their weapons. _"Ever since the wrath of chaos came upon us, the temple district has been a dangerous place. Even after the floods left and the god of destruction disappeared, most of us think nothing will ever be the same." _The guard pointed vaguely down the road. _"Some echidnas spoke of ghostly voices that can be heard in the temple area even if no-one is there and the Great Emerald has been moved to a safer place. Earthquakes shake the ground, and sometimes the very earth glows with the light of the Emerald's Master. People vanished without a trace." _His eyebrows lowered a little._ "The powers are not at rest yet. You shall pass, and nobody will keep you from visiting the sacred place, but be warned. This visit may be your last trip."_

_"I understand, but it is very important for us to see the place of chaos." _The guard nodded and Knuckles bowed again. "_Thank you, Sire_." He turned to Sonic, who was looking between them, trying to get something out of observing since he didn't understand the words. "They let us pass. You should bow your head, that's a sign of respect. And don't grin while you do so."

"I'm not dumb," Sonic complained, but he seemed in control of his features as he inclined his head at the guards.

Knuckles gestured at him to be moving, but the guard leader waved a hand to stop them.

"_Would thee allow me a humble question?", _he asked, looking a lot less authoritarian than before.

Knuckles nodded. "_Of course_."

The echidna guard pointed at Knuckles' feet. "_Your raiment is most uncommon. Is this what people cloth in in this kingdom your companion is from_?"

"_Yes, it is_." Knuckles nodded again.

_"It does not look very comfortable…"_

Knuckles smirked. "_Oh, it is more comfortable and practical than it looks."_

_"I see."_ The guard inclined his head. "_We shall not delay your journey further. May the powers of chaos enlighten and protect your way."_

_"Thank you. May you be gifted with a long life._" Knuckles bowed his head a little again, silently reminding himself not to overdo it. "Come on," he waved at Sonic and they continued their walk down the road.

"What was his problem with your shoes?", Sonic queried the second they were out of earshot.

"He found they look not very comfortable." A grin slipped onto Knuckles' face. "I don't think our clothing was quite his style."

Sonic chuckled. "Look who's talking."

* * *

Archibald Charles Franklin Amadeus Fitzgerald Whitherpooth almost fell off his chair when the bell's ringing echoed loudly through the large observatory. It took the raccoon with the unorderly yellow hair almost two seconds to remember the late-night visitor had announced his arrival a couple hours ago. Archibald smiled, brushing a hand over the white coat he wore, before quickly making his way down the long flight of stairs.

His shoes caused hard knocks on the floor of the hallway as the scientist strode to the entrance. Forcefully tearing the metallic door open, he found himself facing a young fox not much more than half as tall as him and almost three times younger. Still, the little guy was one of the smartest people Archibald knew. And one of the few he'd made friends with. Very few people came to look behind the white walls of the observatory.

"Hello, Tails! It's great to see you agai- How'd you get past the fence?"

The fox smiled, indicating his double appendages. "I used these. Hello Professor!"

"Come in. I'm thrilled to hear what problem made one of the smartest minds on Mobius so desperate." The yellowish raccoon chuckled upon gesturing the youngster in.

"Oh, it's kind of a long story… and I'm hungry." Tails smiled sheepishly. "Do you have anything to eat?"

"Uh, I used to have a few sandwiches, I made them for lunch, don't remember when that was though, then I carried them upstairs, I guess I had them in the living room before, but I don't – ah, Tails, I gotta show you something! I caught two galaxies fusing through the big telescope, it's amazing! You just gotta see this!" Archibald pointed up the stairs to the main room of his observatory.

"Professor? I'd love to," Tails cut in before he could tell him anything more. "You haven't forgotten about the food already, have you?"

The raccoon scratched his head, running a hand through the chaotic hair. "Food? Yeah, of course. Tell ya something: We'll order some pizza, then we can work while someone else brings us the snack." He nodded, proud of his idea.

Frowning, his young guest looked up at him. "You _do_ know that it's two in the morning and the delivery doesn't work that late?"

"Oh, really? … Dang." Archibald's shoulders slumped in defeat. "You know," he sighed, "I spend so much time with my head between the stars I forget things like that…"

Tails smiled sweetly. "I know. But that's cool with me. I've known you for a while. I can even deal with the fact you hardly remember your own full name." Cerulean eyes blinked at the raccoon in a brief moment of childish joy.

"Yeah…" Archibald chuckled. "We're good, right?"

Tails laughed. "We sure are."

The scientist nodded. "Good. Then to your problem."

"And your galaxies." The two-tailed fox smiled.

"They've been there for millions of years and won't run off."

Tails nodded, looking serious. "Unfortunately that doesn't go for my problems. One of them is the fastest thing alive… and very lost."

Archibald curiously tilted his head. "Sonic is lost?"

"Yes, and Knuckles, too. They were kinda... well, they're gone and away, and I have no idea to where, or how to get them back…" The fox' ears folded backwards.

Smiling softly, the scientist put an arm around his young friend, leading him up the stairs. "From the beginning, Tails?"

* * *

Walking aside of Knuckles, Sonic's eyes kept darting around. After his red friend had let him in on what the guards had told him about mysterious things happening around here, expectant silence was prevailing the atmosphere. Progressing at a deliberate pace, both of them waited for something to happen. Neither was sure what kind of thing to expect, though.

The blue hedgehog almost jumped at Knuckles' small yelp. "Sonic!"

"What's up?" Sonic's gaze flashed around.

Knuckles held his left hand to his head. "I dunno… Something's… happening and –" He stopped, eyes wide, and stretched out a shaky hand. "Just what the…?"

Just like the echidna, Sonic could just stare, feeling unable to close his mouth. Before them, the ground was glowing in a dim, green light, a little like the phosphorescent shine of the stickers Tails had on the ceiling of his bedroom, but greener and even less bright. The glow pulsated in a slow frequency, seeming to pass through the grass, trees and other plants as though they were transparent. "Whoa…"

Whirling around, Sonic found the glowing ground continued up to a couple meters behind their position where it stopped abruptly, leaving a flickering border to the unaffected ground. Sonic's gaze dropped down to his feet, and as an at least slightly reassuring thing he noticed the green light didn't shine through his shoes and flesh… It was odd enough without such a thing.

"Master Emerald?" Phrasing the more than rhetorical question, he turned back to Knuckles.

The guardian nodded. "Has to be it. If I –" Once again the echidna was interrupted in his speech as the ground suddenly shook violently. The force of the sudden quake threw the two friends off their feet, and a deep rumble caused the ground to vibrate, announcing another quake.

Sonic struggled to get on all fours. He'd barely accomplished this given the circumstances not easy feat and opened his mouth to say… _something_, when the soil beneath him he'd deemed so stable and solid _jolted, _an acceleration akin to what Sonic remembered the start of the rocket that had brought their shuttle to Space Colony Ark a while ago being like. He was pushed flat to the ground by a force that made it hard to even breathe.

Relief flooded through his body as the pressure reduced as suddenly as it had appeared and he crawled to his knees, looking around for Knuckles. He'd just spotted the echidna when his stomach gave him this weird, light feeling you get when falling freely, and the hedgehog watched, without comprehending anything about it, the ground _tilting_.

As if something like this wouldn't be alarming enough in itself, everything was shaking again, throwing him and Knuckles around like little balls on a pinball table.

They were not the only 'loose things' displaced by the violent quakes; all sorts of rocks and even some trees shared the same fate. Without any actual way of controlling the way or direction he was moving, all Sonic could do to avoid a direct collision was little twists and frantic attempts at jumps. Some were successful, others not so much, and the hedgehog was thrown against hard surfaces more often than he'd like to.

"Knuckles?!" He'd lost sight of his echidna friend by now. Anything else would have been a surprise, actually, looking at how he hardly knew which way was up or down anymore…

"Sonic! We have to try - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" A scream of pain cut off Knuckles' words.

"Knux?! Knuckles!" There came no reply. "KNUCKLES! Say someth- oomph!" Something that looked and felt remotely like the stem of a tree hit Sonic squarely, knocking the wind out of him, the impulse of the impact pushing him along the still steeply tilted ground. He rolled over an edge in it, his hands reaching below him to soften his landing – and went through nothing but air. "Oh oh…"

Turning his head to get a glimpse at what was below, Sonic was stricken with a very nervous making lack of anything there. He was falling, to his right sharp edged rocks rushing by, still in the process of crumbling, causing thousands of bigger and smaller chunks of stone going the same way as Sonic, raining down on… whatever was below. "WHAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

So, they'd found Angel Island, Sonic realized numbly through his panic. And they'd found out how it started flying around… unfortunately, they wouldn't get to tell anyone…

On reflex Sonic curled up, spines stiffened the most they could. He didn't actually think it'd save him, but he was too much in panic to care.

And then the pain started, sharp, drilling into his skull from his forehead… but it was nothing like he'd expected. Sure, he'd never been crushed before, but wasn't this kind of thing supposed to happen _fast_? Bang, splash, that was it?

Instead, for an odd moment it seemed as though he'd stopped falling, stood still in the air. The rumbling was gone, the noise and the rush of air… It was silent. And his head… his head _hurt_. As hell. The longer it lasted, the more the rest of his body filled with a tingling sensation, not entirely painful, but not painfree either. His vision was growing white, then his mind followed until there was just bright whiteness, until he _was_ nothing but bright whiteness.

Suddenly the blinding light everywhere was gone, and he was falling again, noticing the sensation only vaguely through a cloud of dizziness in his head. That was, until he hit the ground, though not near as hard as he'd feared he would.

Groaning aloud, Sonic rolled over, the pain slowly easing away. He kept his eyes closed, focused on his breathing. It was a good way to calm the mind. Just breathe, in and out, don't think. Slowly he started noticing the warmth of sun on his face. The air was heavy with numerous smells and grass tickled him with every little movement.

Curiosity got the better of him and Sonic opened his eyes, squinting up at a blue sky, the blinding sun blinking at him through the giant leaves of a palm tree.

The hedgehog sat up with a jolt. He was sitting in long grass, in midst of a light, tropical forest with palm trees and cedars and some other trees he didn't know, some of them dressed in more flowers than leaves.

"Just what the…?" In spite of better knowing, Sonic's head tilted back, searching for the rocks and the edge he'd fallen over. There was nothing. And it wasn't night anymore… The blue hedgehog sharply shook his head. This didn't make any freaking sense!

… But seriously, what of the things happening in the past day had made sense, actually? Him and Knuckles landing in the past and –

Knuckles! Where was the red echidna?

Sonic hopped to his feet, slowly turning on the spot once to get a full look around. "KNUX!" A few colourful Flickies were alarmed by his yelling and fluttered hastily a few trees away from him, but they were the only creatures paying attention to him. Sonic sighed, hands fisting. He had to find Knuckles… and find out where he'd landed… and how.

* * *

_Speedy's note: This chapter brought along something of a premiere. It's the first time I ever brought back an OC from a previous story. Now, I thought a long time about doing it or not doing it. Not because I dislike crazy Professor Archibald, no. In fact, I am really fond of him. Still, OCs in Sonic fiction often have a kind of bad name and a lot of people don't like them.  
In the end Archibald didn't turn up in this story because I desperately wanted to use the character again. With the way the plot was going, I had the choice to either have Tails figure out all the technical stuff on his own, or give him someone to lend him a hand with it. As you've seen in the previous chapter, Tails' canon friends aren't all that helpful when it comes to sciency things. I briefly thought of Professor Pickle from Sonic Unleashed, but he's from all it seems a historian, reading old manuscripts while eating cucumber sandwiches. I needed someone capable of seeing through chaos physics, and I already had someone like that. Be assured that y__ou don't need to know anything about him, or about 'Chaos and Confusion', the story he's originally from, to understand this story. _


	8. Broken

**Broken**

Through a haze of pain, Knuckles slowly became aware of his gasping, raspy breath. While the headache dissipated rather quickly, his right arm felt as though several not so small, dull saws were busily working on detaching his hand and forearm from everything up his elbow, and unlike everything else, it just seemed to get worse as the slow seconds passed.

Opening his eyes through an act of sheer willpower, the echidna tried getting a look on the injured limb, already expecting it to have fallen off or something.

Somewhat reassuringly, it had not. Stiffly and with efforts he got into a sitting position on the hard, black ground and quickly examined the damage… as well as possible. He couldn't move his right hand and his forearm formed an odd angle. Touching a fingertip just to his fur resulted in raising the pain's peak level to that exact amount that made the edges of your vision grow black and everything else swim out of focus.

Pressing his good left hand to the ground behind his back to help stabilize himself, Knuckles panted through clenched teeth, waiting for the pain to recede to a bearable level. As it did, the question of where in the world he was got through to him.

Still sitting and refraining from any quick or major movements, the guardian turned his head, left, right, and even up. Wherever 'here' was, it was bright daylight, the air flickering in the blistering heat, especially above the dark paved road he sat on. Shining white stripes on it marked two lanes and the road's sides were lined with tropical trees, palms and flowered bushes.

He got to his feet very carefully, pressing a sharp curse through ground teeth. It took a minute until he'd rested his injured arm tucked against his body and held by his left hand in a way he thought he could stand, then he slowly started walking along that road. He had no idea where it went, but as Sonic had truthfully said, roads had to lead _somewhere_. And somewhere was better than nowhere, which was where he was at the moment.

Sonic. The thought of what could have happened to the hedgehog crossed his mind just briefly, then other things were claiming too many priorities.

The heat, for example. Knuckles quickly lost any track of time he might have had left as he walked down the road. The vegetation next to it didn't really change. Nothing appeared in his view besides sky, road, plants and sun. The latter was spending all its energy into trying to melt the asphalt beneath his feet as well as the contents of his skull. His arm of course didn't approve of any of this.

Still, a tiny smile fought its way onto his face even through the grimace at the sight of a couple double lines of small, spinning rings. Reflecting the bright sunlight with each revolution, their golden twinkle in itself was a relief; in his mind the mere look connected to the memory of uncounted occasions before when the chaos energy they held within had cured his injuries.

His steps accelerating a little, Knuckles made his way over to the first group of glittering rings, walking right into them, waiting for the short instant of dizziness and the 'pling' sound when their energies absorbed into his body.

It didn't come.

Knuckles' feet stopped and he stared in total disbelief at the golden rings around him. He stood right in the middle of them, and the closest one was rotating right _through_ his left leg as if he was air. Or the ring was air. Or… whatever.

Letting go of his right elbow he'd supported with his good hand up to then, the echidna stretched his left arm out towards the spinning rounds. There was no resistance when he touched the space the ring suspended in. No pling, no energy, no nothing.

Staring at his hand, at the rings and back at his hand, Knuckles shook his head. "This is… _not true_…"

For a second or two he actually considered if he was dreaming, if all of this was just a sick nightmare. If it was, now was a good moment to wake up. On second thought, taking into account the angrily pounding fire in his right forearm and the pestering heat of the sun burning down on his skull, it was quite a little too real for a dream of some sort.

Once again Knuckles reached out into the bunch of gold rings, once again his fingers went through them as if either didn't exist. The echidna shook his head. He didn't _want_ to believe this. How could they not work?

… _Like the Master Emerald_.

The thought struck like a bolt of lightening. He couldn't feel the Master Emerald since… since this had started, since Eggman's whatever it was had blown up and they'd stumbled right into all of this trouble. He couldn't feel the energy. Knuckles knew the golden rings consisted of chaos energy just like the Emeralds did. What had Eggman's exploding thing done to _him_? And… what if it _stayed_ that way?

Drawing a shaky breath, Knuckles slipped his left palm back under his right arm, grimacing at the touch. Had he felt like crap before, now he could reasonably claim he'd hardly ever felt worse before in his life.

Not even looking at the rings anymore, he walked forwards again. Staying here was fruitless… and so was walking to any other place.

As if having decided to mock the echidna, the heat just seemed to get worse. The shadow his body threw barely took the space his feet touched on the ground in the vertical sunlight. He would have given so much for a pond of cool water right about now… But there was nothing like it. Just tropical sun blazing on pavement.

He staggered, frantically regained his balance, pushed himself forwards. There was a little part of common sense left in his brain telling him that this wasn't the place to stay at, that he had to keep moving.

It took another few hundreds of more and more heavy footsteps until that little voice fell unnoticed, until he dropped down in the light shade of a palm tree next to the road, calming his conscience by claming it was just a short break, disregarding the fact he didn't feel like standing up anytime soon and move on.

His back sank against the tree's stem, resting his bad arm in his lap, drops of sweat slowly running down his forehead and face. He licked off a few that touched his lips, hoping to calm his thirst. Then he just lay there, in a strange, totally surreal way not caring anymore. As if all of this really was just a twisted dream, and as if he was just a spectator in it.

* * *

Ivo Robotnik's eyes scanned the freshly printed data sheet he held in hands. It contained information on the progress of his power core project, and the data was beginning to look promising.

Technically speaking, Robotnik was planning to build an all new power storing device. He'd based the function on the design of the chaos drives, small casings that could hold a small amount of different types of chaos energy. The new power core, once finished, would be able to contain thousands of times as much as a puny chaos drive. It wouldn't get that close to a Chaos Emerald, but it would be entirely sufficient for his purpose.

Using the ring energy brought along various advantages. The most obvious one was that it was easy to get a hold of the energy holding specimen. Rings spawned everywhere on Mobius, in an apparently random system, although almost always in clear, geometric patterns. Since the rings were everywhere and came without any work for him, recharging the power core once it was finished and in use should be a lot easier than with other installations he'd used before, like for example the robots that ran on the Hyper-Go-On energy of the alien wisp creatures. Snatching enough of the little beasts to refill his batteries had been a horrendrous amount of work. A waste of time by Robotnik's concern.

Aside of the great availability, rings apparently were the least chaotic form of the chaos energy, if that way to phrase it made any sense. The scientific rules they followed were, while not comparable with regular matter, still somewhat _reliable_. Not like a Chaos Emerald that could always, no matter how much precaution one applied, do something it had never done before, and would probably never do again. A ring, even a great number of them, was much nicer to handle. Much less savage.

Again Robotnik read through the assembly protocol, then he nodded to himself. He would soon be able to conduct first tests on it. The scientist grinned to himself, running a hand along his moustache. Testing was so much more fun than planning.

* * *

"Now that's just great…" Sonic sighed to himself.

You'd think that after an hour of running through a tropical forest you would have seen something interesting. At least that was what Sonic had thought. Well, if you considered multiple small animals, thousands of different plants and a generally beautiful nature as interesting, he would have been right. Since the hedgehog was – and if just momentarily – more interested in finding a clue on his location and the whereabouts of his red companion, jungle beauty didn't really strike him right now.

He was almost glad when he rounded a colourfully flowered bush, scaring a little squirrel, and stood in front of a set of rough wooden tables and benches.

One eyebrow raised, Sonic's eyes roamed the simple furniture on the meadow before him. "Something like a picnic area," he mused, walking around one of the tables. Something caught at his leg and he looked down, finding it to be the page of a newspaper. A slight frown on his face, the blue hedgehog picked it up, turning it around so he could read. He blinked, for a moment stuck at stupidly staring at it.

He was holding the first page of the sports section of the 'South Island Times', dated the fifth of July… ten years ago. "Welcome home, Sonic," he mumbled, still staring down on the paper.

In a way, this was a lucky shot. He'd found out where he was, even if this newspaper was probably a few days old, it didn't matter.

South Island. The place he'd grown up at. A beautiful island, full of forests and with long beaches as well as exciting cliffs. Sonic had spent his childhood here… until Robotnik's first attack in history. Ever since, meaning the past five years, Sonic had fought the evil scientist whenever a new doomsday plan appeared. It was his life, and he rarely regretted it. After all, without the thrill of adventures, would he be the same Sonic he was now?

Shaking his head, Sonic forced his mind away from these contemplations, placing the newspaper on the wooden picnic table. He'd found out where he was, that meant one objective down, what in return meant two more to go. Deciding to put 'How the hell did I get here?' on hold for now, that left 'Where the heck is Knuckles?'.

Determined to find an answer to this particular question next, Sonic strode past the picnic furniture. A small path led him through the light jungle for about a minute, then the hedgehog stepped past the treeline and found himself next to a paved road.

He looked left, and right, and left again. The asphalt ran in a close to straight line as far as he could see. Sonic looked again.

"I'd need a coin to throw," he said, grinning to himself. In lack of one, he finally settled for going right.

Out on the road it was even hotter than it had been between the jungle trees. Sonic glimpsed up at the merciless sun. No cloud to obscure it in sight. Not that this really surprised him. In the middle of summer the temperatures on South Island, could easily reach forty degrees in the shade, especially not at the beach where you still had the cooling breeze from the sea. The hedgehog looked back down, watching the hot air blur above the pavement.

"This is weather for ice cream," he noticed. Hmm… Ice cream would really be nice now.

As if his longing had been heard, the blue hedgehog spotted a sign next to the road and stopped to read it. Bold black letters on a yellow background informed trespassers that South Island's capital was 30 miles away.

Sonic smirked. A mere stone's throw. He fell into a relaxed jog along the road. "Ice cream, here I come!"

Hopefully, the hedgehog mused, he would also find a trace of the red echidna soon.

* * *

"… and finally the new tracking device blew up on me," Tails finished his report, sitting on a rare free spot on top of Archibald's huge (and messy) desk. "And then I called you…" The young fox looked up at his friend, shoulders slumped and twin tails hanging limply down the table at his sides.

The yellow raccoon didn't say anything for a moment, instead took off his glasses and started polishing the glass with a tip of his white coat's sleeve, seeming totally focused on it. Nothing but the distant look in his blue eyes told Tails his friend's mind was doing overtime.

Suddenly, with a swift, curt motion Archibald set his glasses back on his nose. "This radiation you caught." It was not even a full sentence, and to anyone not knowing him it might have sounded like a senseless statement and not a question.

Tails wasn't 'anyone', and he could reasonably claim to be probably the only person on the planet understanding the crazy professor. "I'm not sure. It has a lot of parameters you can also observe in chaos energy fields, but something's really different."

Another moment of silence followed, then Archibald raised an eyeridge. "Have you done vector factorization?"

Tails blinked. "No."

Archibald nodded. "We'll look into that first."

The next half an hour consisted of Tails reading the data he'd already gathered to the professor who typed it into his computer., a huge, noisily ventilating device that certainly consumed the power needed to run a little town… and something Tails was secretly jealous he didn't have… yet.

Finally, the large screens showed not only chains of numbers, equations and tables, but also several graphs.

Pointing at the latter, the professor indicated one of them, highlighting it so it stuck out among the rest of the data. "I made the computer draw a chaos flux space vector diagram for us, based on the isolated components of the chaos field caused by your mysterious explosion. Now we can finally look at it without all that interference out there." He smiled.

Tails tilted his head, his gaze running over the graph. From the left to the right, a green line ran up and down in a zigzag pattern, rough, sharp teeth forming hills and valleys in what on first sight looked like randomness. On second look however Tails noticed the longer rhythm that lay beneath the small zigzag teeth.

He scratched behind his ear. "Ventricular fibrillation."

The raccoon laughed. "Looks like it, yeah." He leaned forwards, fingers rushing over the keyboard. "But look."

On the screen the zigzag was evened out, leaving a clear, symmetrical curve behind. "A sine oscillation?" Tails frowned thoughtfully.

"If we leave out the minor fluctuations, which are normal, always existent in any kind of chaos energy and im to find an actual pattern in that's not apparent randomness, this is what stays behind. A perfectly clean fluctuation in the radiation's intensity." Archibald's arms folded on his chest.

Through narrowed eyes Tails stared at the curve. "I've never seen anything as… _un_-_random_ before… in chaos energy things, I mean. What is it? And… what _caused_ it?"

"If I'm not totally mistaken, the explosion you spoke of. That, by the way, wasn't an explosion," the professor noticed matter-of-factly.

"I know," Tails nodded slowly, "I thought it could be something like Chaos Control. A lot of the parameters match."

He received a nod from his friend. "There's a difference that stuck out to me: When splitting a Chaos Control impulse into its components, we always found either the spatial or temporal components of it to be prevailing. If Chaos Control is used to slow down or stop time, it's the temporal part that outbalances the others; if it's a teleport the spatial dimensions are affected." Archibald paused. "This one," he pointed at the graph on the screen, "is both."

Tails stared at him. "And that means?"

"I'm not sure yet. But look at this." He typed another command into his computer and the highlight was removed from the graph and switched to a frame hosting a bunch of numbers.

Tails scanned through them, shook his head, returned to the first and slowly read through it all again. Once more shaking his head, he turned to his friend. "You're not telling me whatever this thing I tracked actually is, it's outside the _universe_?"

The yellow raccoon shifted, a hand fumbling with his unorderly hair. "Not exactly. It's a chaos field, of a kind that doesn't _entirely_ fit into the universe's construction…"

Tails's eyes narrowed. "That goes for all chaos objects, starting with the golden rings, continuing with the Chaos Emerald, the Master Emerald and ending with Super Sonic. They're a compromise. A small part of a higher dimension interfused with ours."

"Yes. And this new _thing_ " - the tone he said that word with told Tails very well how little Archibald liked using an unspecific term like that – "is one step up from them. Something… more fifth-dimensionally than anything I've seen before."

Tails dropped down onto the desk chair. "Wow."

"Uh, yes." The professor took off his glasses again, brushing over them. A habit when he was thinking hard. "We have tracked two of these abnormal chaos fields in a rather limited space… as good as we can determine the spatial position. The problem is, if we can tell where they are spatially, we can't determine their temporal position."

"Uncertainty principle." Tails nodded. "I know… But… why is time so important?"

"I assume that, based on the knowledge they're both sensitive to chaos energy and have been interacting with it in various ways before, Sonic and Knuckles, being so close to that chaos blast or whatever we want to call it, have absorbed a good portion of that new, free energy. That's what we can track."

"Two chaos fields." Tails nodded.

"Yes. So if we track down the chaos fields, we track down our friends." Archibald frowned. "The problem is that according to your data, we have both time and space variables. Additionally, judging from the intensity at the graph's peak points, this new Chaos Control form has happened twice already… and will do so again."

"They've really changed both their temporal and spatial positions? Twice?" Tails shook his head. "I can't believe it…"

The professor looked at him seriously. "Time travels. A very interesting field…"

Tails nodded again. "And a very risky one as well."

"Indeed, my friend."


	9. Patches

**Patches**

Ironically, Sonic felt less of the heat after picking up a pace than he had felt of it while walking. The wind was gently tugging on his curvy quills and brushing through his fur, taking some of the warmth away.

A jog at just a few hundred miles per hour didn't really strain the blue hedgehog, nor did it require any actual attention, especially not on a straight, smoothly paved road. After less than a minute of running, Sonic's mind wandered away from the path and ended up spinning around a question that had occurred to him just briefly before.

Sonic wasn't anything like a scientific genius as Tails was, but he wasn't stupid. Usually he understood at least basically how something worked.

He was able to accept the idea that when Eggman's weird machine had blow up on them back at his base, with a Chaos Emerald so close by, that some kind of chaos effect had sent him and Knuckles back in time. Sonic's understanding didn't go far enough to try grasping the exact way something like this worked. He also didn't know how Chaos Control worked, and he didn't care much. The simple fact that it _did_ work was okay with him.

In the same way that allowed him to accept that through physical effects he didn't understand an Emerald could be used for teleportation or stopping time, he could also accept that through a similar effect they'd been send to the past. Fine. But that was where his understanding stopped.

The concept he'd accepted behind their first time travel – Eggman machine blows up, Chaos Emerald does time-travel thing – couldn't be applied to this second time it had happened just a few hours ago.

It had been the same, exactly the same… The headaches, this feeling of being torn apart while it happened, the strange whiteness he'd seen… The entire event was like a copy of the first… if you counted out the weird, blurry surreal-ness he had witnessed in Eggman's lab before the actual time-transport happened. Still, the thing itself was the same.

And yet, there was an important difference to the last time: There was neither a strange Eggman machine around, nor an Emerald. There had been these Master Emerald effects, but Sonic didn't think they were involved. They'd made the island fly, but he'd already been falling when the teleport… or whatever it really was happened. The only consistent things, the only factors that were there for both events were Knuckles and himself. Maybe it was something they had with them and didn't know they did that caused these teleporting things, but Sonic couldn't really think of anything. Neither of them carried anything but their clothing, really…

The hedgehog forcefully shook his head. Nothing of this made sense, and apparently he wasn't very talented at the 'think like Tails' thing. At least, nothing of use turned out when he tried… A frown crossed over Sonic's brow at the thought of his young, two-tailed friend. He hoped Tails was alright, unhurt, in the right time and all.

Had he gotten out of the base by himself without trouble? And, almost equally important, had he figured out what happened to Knuckles and Sonic? The blue hedgehog didn't doubt that Tails was searching for them. They were gone for two days or something, by Sonic's guessing. It became kind of hard to guess how much time passed when you ended up at random places. Twice.

No, Sonic was sure Tails was searching for them, but how would he find them like that? The hedgehog sighed. He didn't really doubt Tails. He never did. Tails was one, if not the most, reliable factor in Sonic's life. If anyone could figure out what was going on and how to fix it, Tails would.

Sonic smiled a little, deciding that if Tails was searching for a way out and if he and Knuckles kept searching for a way out as well, it couldn't be so bad. Best to enjoy this freaky time travel while it lasted, then.

Leaning a little more into the wind blowing into his face, Sonic let himself relax and focus on running, taking the curves of the road at a still relatively low speed that allowed him to look at everything around. There was nothing much but jungle to see, but it was beautiful, and so awfully familiar it rang thousands of bells in his head.

He spotted the red shape just from the very corner of his eye as he rushed past. Spinning around to run backwards, he looked again, a bright red form too much sticking out between the green flora next to the road not to catch his eye. He made a swift turn just a second after actually looking at what he'd spotted, dashing back and sliding to a stop, causing his sneaker's soles to screech loudly in protest.

"Yo, Knucklehead! You know, you're pretty hard to find in this jungle…"

Brushing some dust off his fur, the blue hedgehog started talking before actually looking at the echidna. He did when he received no reply, not even the anticipated grunt, growl or a muttered vocalization of annoyance.

"Hey, whatever brought us here, it wasn't my fault, you know?", he noticed, expecting anger or frustration at their anew misplacement to be the cause of Knuckles' silence. When he looked at his face however, he dropped his playful teasing.

The echidna was kipped against a palm tree. Due to the angle of the sun, it offered little shadow and Knuckles' face lay in bright sunlight. His red fur was darkened and clamped with sweat, the skin of his muzzle coated with a glazing film and a few visible droplets. Half-lidded eyes dully gazed up at Sonic, and the red guardian was breathing more quickly than the hedgehog considered a healthy creature in rest against a tree should.

Kneeling at his side so he could actually face him, Sonic waved his hand in front of his eyes, trying to snap him out of whatever trance he seemed in. "Knuckles! Hey!"

The echidna blinked slowly. "Leave me alone, Sonic…"

In spite of these not welcoming words, Sonic was glad he'd finally said something at all. "I'm sorry, no can do. You don't look as if you could go without help…" He tried a smile while casting his eyes over Knuckles' body. They stopped at his right arm and he reached to persuade his friend's left hand away from it so he could actually look.

Knuckles winced, jolting a little more upright, sending a glare at Sonic. "I don't need any help! What part of 'leave me alone' did you miss?"

Sonic felt a sarcastic smirk form on his face. "Ah, I see. You've got everything perfectly covered. Now explain me: What part does sitting here and getting yourself heat struck take in this oh so awesome plan of yours?"

Knuckles stared, open-mouthed like a fish. "I…"

"Yeah, that's really a wonderful plan," Sonic remarked dryly as the echidna trailed off. "Now tell me what's up with your arm."

If he was still searching for a way to handle Sonic's probably unexpected way of dealing with him or if the commanding tone in the hedgehog's voice did it remained a mystery to Sonic, but Knuckles' hand moved a little away from his right forearm. "It's nothing," he muttered.

Sonic bit back a gasp upon seeing it and struggled to keep his leisure, dry tone. "Ah, a nice little nothing you got there… bending your arm in whole new angles. How'd that happen?"

"I dunno… Something fell on it. Or I fell on it. Or both…" Knuckles' head dropped back against the stem of the palm tree.

Sonic nodded as if that had been a helpful statement. "How long have you been sitting here, getting yourself toasted?"

The echidna attempted a shrug and the groan of pain that followed managed to find a way though gritted teeth. "No.. idea…"

Sonic nodded again, skipping on his friend's not quite successful struggle to look unaffected. "Okay." He looked him over again. "Any more nothings you wanna tell me about?"

He received another death glare.

"Just asking." Sonic smiled softly, finding the knowledge that Knuckles was injured, tired and probably on a good way of getting himself critically heat struck made it a lot easier putting up with his moods and tempers.

"You know you can't stay here, as…" He spent a short look around casting about for a fitting term. "… as friendly and inviting as this place might be."

Knuckles grunted. "It's not that there was anywhere to go…"

"I passed a street sign a quarter hour or so ago. The road's heading right for the capital of the island we're on. And that's where we're gonna go as well now. I know they've got a hospital there."

"I don't need any weird surface-dweller doctoring!", Knuckles protested.

"No, of course you don't." Sonic shook his head. "I just figured you can't do any freaking guardian of the freaking Master Emerald magic to mend broken bones, 'cause if you could, you wouldn't sit here attempting to turn yourself into a well-through echidna steak."

Once again Knuckles was left staring. "But –"

"No."

"I didn't even say –"

"I don't need to hear it, I know you. Knux." Sonic looked at him sternly. "You've got two choices now. Either you get up and we'll go to town together, or I'll just run and call an ambulance to get you there, and if I need to knock you out for that, fine. You're one arm short of standing a chance in a fight. Either way, I'll get you to see a doctor and get this arm of yours fixed, may you like it or not… It's broken in two places, from the looks of it. Maybe you should consider that you'll need it for the rest of your life and that you're really screwed if it doesn't mend correctly."

The red echidna blinked, still staring at Sonic. The hedgehog didn't look away, until something happened that rarely came to be in case of a staring contest of that kind between them: Knuckles looked away first. "Fine," he mumbled, defeated, and Sonic was reminded how groggy he really looked. "Can we stay for a moment?", he asked then, quiet as if ashamed.

"Sure, if it's not too long…" Sonic nodded, watching him for a moment, then he stood up. "I'll go get us a drink. I'm really thirsty, and you gotta be as well. Okay?" He eyed his scarlet friend suspiciously.

"I won't run away," the echidna muttered.

"Good. That's all I wanted to hear." Sonic turned and sped off, not saying aloud that running away wouldn't be a very successful attempt anyway. He was the fastest thing alive, playing tag with him was a losing game anyway… and while Knuckles certainly wasn't a slow runner himself, at the moment he didn't look like he would manage a good run.

The town really wasn't far, just a minute later Sonic passed the first houses. He stopped at the first best supermarket, fishing a few coins out of the hidden pocket in his shoe. Another few minutes later he exited the shop with a description of the way to the city's hospital and a huge bottle of Chaos Cola.

While he knew this stuff wasn't anything like a favourite drink to Knuckles, he considered a good dose of sugar and caffeine really could only improve matters. What he didn't know wouldn't bother him, so Sonic made an agreement with his conscience to just claim there had been no juice or other drinks.

When he arrived where he'd left Knuckles, the bottle blew up on him, much to the Emerald guardian's amusement. Consistent shaking probably really wasn't a good thing to do with carbonated drinks…

Sonic used the time they sat and finished the coke to let Knuckles in on what he'd found out on their location and just as expected his friend wasn't really happy to hear they were not back home but still in the past. Sonic tried lifting his spirits reminding him they were a lot 'less' in the past now, but it didn't help much.

In another sense the hedgehog's trying seemed more successful; after drinking most of the cool liquid Knuckles looked a lot better than when Sonic had found him. With that as a basis and bit more pushiness and threatening, the two of them finally set off.

* * *

Tails sat on the desk again, dangling his legs. In the middle of the room, the giant telescope seemed to be standing guard over the two Mobians in the lab.

"So, if they're really doing time travels, because they're full of a chaos radiation that does time travels…" Tails shrugged. "And we don't know where they are or _when_ they are there… How do we get them back?" It was the critical question. If they didn't find an answer to it, any other answers they might find held no value at all.

"If we want to try teleporting them back into our world and timeline, we need as much energy as the process that brought them to where they are now." Archibald walked back and forth in front of Tails.

"We need a Chaos Emerald," the fox specified. "If that isn't enough, I'm sure we can take the Master Emerald and for one time in his life Knuckles wouldn't mind. Energy shouldn't be a problem."

"The interface is the problem." Archibald ran a hand through the mess of strands on his head, bending one pointed ear in the progress. "Tails, I'm professor of physics and astronomy, I'm afraid I have no idea how to build a working time teleporter."

Tails shrugged. "No-one does, as far as I know. We'll just have to improvise. I've already got an idea."

The professor's eyebrows shot up. "Specifically?"

Tails jumped off the table and turned around to point at the screen. "We concluded that when there is a peak in the chaos flux, a time teleport happens, right?"

Archibald nodded.

"So, it's radiation… or, an impulse." Tails snapped his fingers. "If a chaos impulse works anything similar to any electromagnetic one, we need an antenna to catch it."

The yellow raccoon stared at him, his bushy, striped tail moving slowly. "This is crazy… In fact, it's crazy enough to try."

A grin slipped onto Tails' face. "Then let's do it!"

* * *

"Hey, what do you think you're doin'?" Knuckles slid off the examination table he'd just taken a seat on as the doctor, a mouse in his mid-forties, took out a syringe and reached out for him. "I don't do drugs!"

"Knuckles, it's just medicine," Sonic interjected, pushing the echidna back down. Man, he sure was a lot worse than Sonic himself… The hedgehog looked up at the doctor. "It'll help healing your arm." Secretly Sonic was sure that besides the antibiotics the liquid in the syringe contained a painkiller. But if they told Knuckles _that_, he'd refuse taking it.

If the white-coated man was aware of that or not was unimportant, but for some reason he didn't give further information and just nodded to Sonic' explanation. "Your friend is right, I will not poison you," he said in a soft voice, quirking an eye ridge in surprise when Knuckles didn't show the slightest wince as the needle slid into his arm. "See, that wasn't too bad now, was it?", he smiled down on the echidna. Then he looked over to Sonic. "You can wait outside if you want, I have sworn an oath to _heal_ people, not kill them…"

Sonic shook his head. He knew Knuckles certainly didn't need company to hold his hand… but maybe a mediator. "It's not him I'm worried about."

The doctor gave him a weird look, but didn't comment on it. Instead, he seemed to have decided changing the topic to a more relaxed level; while he spread some items on a small table, his gaze wandered up and down his strange patient. "Will it offend you if I ask you what species you are? I've seen many, but in your case I have no idea."

"Echidna," Knuckles replied shortly, watching him suspiciously.

The mouse frowned at him. "I thought those are extinct."

"Do I look very extinct?"

The medic chuckled. "Actually, no. Must have been false information then." He moved over and started to examine Knuckles' arm more closely. "How did that happen you said?"

"A bunch of rocks crashed down on him," Sonic told him.

"Ah really? Where?"

Knuckles shook his head. "Out of question."

The doctor blinked, looked over to Sonic as if seeking support; the hedgehog shrugged, if Knuckles didn't want to tell he wouldn't either; and the doctor went on examining the echidna's injury silently.

* * *

Feeling stupid with Sonic lurking about just watching him, Knuckles had managed to persuade the hedgehog to wait in the hospital's cafeteria while his arm was screened and finally tended to. Almost half an hour after Sonic had left, Knuckles left the room, finding himself on a long corridor. Brightly white walls, cold neon lights, and the penetrating smell of disinfectant didn't actually make the place comfortable.

Unsure where to go now and left with no idea what was the best and quickest way out, the echidna slowly wandered along the corridors, his arm resting in a sling. It had almost stopped hurting by now; the angry throbbing of earlier mysteriously receded to a dull pounding. After straightening the broken bone, what had indeed hurt great deal, the doctor had put it into an all-around splint of a hard white material. They had called it a _cast_. It covered his arm now from just below his elbow up to half of his hand, leaving just his fingers free. Since it was on, his forearm felt slightly numb, as if it would only partly belong to him, but Knuckles didn't care much as it was a great improvement to the situation before.

The red echidna was starting to ponder if he'd gotten entirely lost in this hospital. Damn all these walls and doors looking all the same. Sighing to himself, he stopped walking right in the middle of the corridor. He felt woozy and didn't really know how to regain his bearings. He looked around cluelessly.

Just a step or two from where he was, a dark purple furred otter stood with her back to him, fumbling with her long dress, gazing through a window into the room that lay behind. As if feeling Knuckles' presence, she turned over her shoulder, large hazel eyes filled with sadness, but a warm smile tugged briefly on her lips at the sight of him.

"Can I help you?"

Knuckles tried a smile. "Oh, I'm just not sure which way is out of here."

The woman smiled back. "That's where everyone here wants, I suppose." Her look returned to the window. "I'm sure this little guy would like to be elsewhere, too."

Tilting his head, Knuckles slowly walked closer, also throwing a look through the window.

"Poor thing…", the female at his side noticed, pity evident in her voice, but Knuckles hardly heard her.

His attention seemed unable to focus on her as soon as he dared the look into the hospital room. It wasn't very big, and almost filled by the white bed that appeared so many times too big for the small form that lay on it. The child was curled up on his side, the blanket covering him up to his waist. As a sharp contrast to the colourless furniture, the child's fur and the curved quills lying on the pillow stuck out in royal blue. Knuckles blinked. Six headspines, and two smaller ones on the tiny hedgehog's shoulder blades. The small, triangular ears lay folded back displaying discomfort even as he was clearly asleep. Small, peach coloured hands had curled around the pillow's edges.

"Hello? Is everything okay? Don't you feel good?" The otter's voice brought Knuckles back to reality.

"I… I'm okay. A little lightheaded maybe, but I'm good, really." He forced his eyes away from the young hedgehog on the bed. "What happened to him?"

"Do you know him?" Suddenly, the woman sounded excited.

Knuckles shrugged a little, and regretted it as soon as he did, his broken arm reminding him of its presence by sending a sharp pain through him. Fighting off a grimace, the echidna threw a look back at the sleeping child. "I'm not sure. Maybe if you could tell me something more I'd figure it out?"

She nodded. "I don't see why not. Come on, we'll sit down over there, okay?", she suggested, pointing at a small bench on the other side of the corridor. Knuckles nodded.

"By the way, I'm Nelly." She held out a hand at him, realized his corresponding one was currently out of service and quickly switched hands with an apologizing smile.

Shaking her hand, the red echidna smiled a little, too. "My name is Knuckles."

"Nice to meet you." She leaned back on the bench, crossing her legs at the knees, throwing him a side-glance. "Well, I guess I'll tell you what I know about the kid. It's kind of a tragedy, I guess..."


	10. Hedgehog Out Of The Water

**Hedgehog Out Of The Water**

_Rummaging through the drawer, Howard Otter grunted in annoyance. "Nelly, dear? Where did you put my boots?"_

_His wife chuckled lightly behind him. "I didn't put them anywhere, darling. You took them off in the kitchen, so I guess they will still be standing there…"_

_Howard laughed. Closing the somewhat messy drawer again, the brown otter smiled at his wife. The two elders had spent almost their entire lives together, and each one knew the other one's bad habits. "What would I do without you?", he joked._

_"Get lost, my dear. Totally lost." Nelly leaned against the doorframe, watching her husband pull on his thick boots and the water-proof long jacket. "And you're sure you have to go out in this storm?"_

_He nodded. "I have to pull the boat ashore… if the storm hasn't __already __taken it. You'd think an old fisherman like me would know how to predict such a weather…"_

_"An old fisherman indeed. Perhaps you're losing your touch?" She giggled in gentle teasing._

_Howard frowned, knowing not to let her rub on him. "Never anything like that, Nelly. This is in your blood until the day you die."_

_"If you say so, darling. Don't be too long, I'll prepare dinner." She smiled, waving lightly when he turned to the door. _

_Closing it behind him, the warm cosiness of the small house was replaced with the screaming winds and hard rain of a thunderstorm. The lighthouse tower next to the house stubbornly stuck its tip into the darkened skies, the circling beam reaching into the greys and blacks in vain attempts to chase them off. A __couple hundred meters below the cliff the __waves were hitting the rocks hard enough to be heard clearly even over the flooding rain. L__ightening bolts sizzled zig-zag lines across the almost black clouds, immediately followed by a__ loud clash of thunder roaring through the heavy air. __Their small, thin headland growing out of South Island stuck far into the wide sea, and the shallows in front of the coast were dangerous. The lighthouse was important._

_Howard pulled his collar as high up as he could, defensively ducking his head into the jacket. It didn't help much fighting in off the biting winds, and soon every part of him not covered by his jacket was drenched. Jogging along a small path, the otter noticed idly that years ago the weather probably wouldn't have felt as annoying as it did now. Maybe Nelly was right saying the two of them weren't twenty anymore. Regardless of that, he was the lighthouse keeper, even in a storm like this. Especially in a storm like this.  
_

_Additionally, a proper lighthouse keeper needed his boat, the quickest way into town. It was a principle thing, and Howard didn't want to lose it. So, he was jogging through this hostile late afternoon, heading for the small bay where the boat was kept, letting the rain soak his fur and leaning into the strong, gusty winds, trying his best not to get blown off. _

_Nelly was right about many things. He was a stubborn old idiot at times._

_A small smile flickered on the otter's grim face at the thought as he climbed down the last few meters of sharp rocks towards the beach. Pebbles and sea shells crunching underfoot, he made his way over to the pear. His face lit up when he reached it. There it was, his boat, tossing violently against the rope that secured it in place, but so far it had managed to withstand the stormy waves. _

_Five minutes later Howard had pulled his precious belongings onto the stony beach. Panting lightly, the otter stood next to it and looked out over the sea. The water appeared almost black on spots. Just the fuming whiteness of the raging crests kept it from looking just like the dark grey sky above. _

_Standing and watching the spectacle for a moment, the otter couldn't possibly miss the dot of colour being thrown around between the high waves._

_Lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the hard rain, he strainedly tracked it, lost sight of it several times, but always found it back as the waves washed it closer and close to the shore. Howard moved closer to the water, staring at the thing when it popped up behind a wave's ridge again. A red and white ring spinning and bobbing in the dark floods, holding a small, limp frame of dark blue. _

_"Good chaos…", the old lighthouse keeper muttered, running up to the water until he stood right next to it. Nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he waited for the ring to reach the shallow water. He knew that jumping in in a blind hurry was more dangerous and stupid than helpful for anyone. _

_The minute it took until the striped ring got itself stuck between rocks in the shallow water felt like a lifespan. Finally ignoring common sense's warnings, Howard waded through the still near hip-deep water, with just a detached part of his attention looking out for the waves pulling the soil from under his feet. The otter fearfully looked at the stranded one, his face paling a little more upon realizing it was a child, clearly not older than five or six. It was a hedgehog, the blue quills heavy with wetness and almost matching the sea's dark shade. The little body draped powerlessly over the plastic ring, arms across it, but the head rested above the water surface. _

_Praying to the God of the Seas he'd never actually even believed in, Howard reached out, grabbing the child under its armpits and lifted it up, hurrying back onto currently not so dry land. Carefully laying the small form down, he had little hopes when he started searching for signs of life, but it seemed the little hedgehog meant to surprise him. He had to get this kid out of the cold. Opening his jacket and scooping up the hedgehog, Howard found he was surprisingly light, and not so surprisingly spiky. It took him some efforts moving the little body under his jacket so he could hold him securely, then he hurried back to the lighthouse, into the warmth and to the care of his wife._

* * *

"We brought him here in the next morning. We tried finding out who he is, but he is either too small or doesn't remember much. At the moment we have just a name that sounds like it's not a real name but a pet name of sorts. Who calls their kid Sonic?" Nelly sighed.

A strained frown was digging itself into Knuckles' brow as he tried to digest the story, and fit it into what he knew about Sonic. Suddenly he realized that he knew very little about the blue hedgehog, even after all this time they knew each other. Sonic had rarely mentioned his childhood to Knuckles... Okay, Knuckles didn't talk about his childhood to Sonic either, but Sonic was the talkative one of them... And now Knuckles was left wondering why Sonic never talked about his past. Maybe because there wasn't much past to talk about?

Finally noticing Nelly was staring at him, the echidna struggled to find something to say that wouldn't be suspiscious and finally settled for a question. "He doesn't remember what?"

The woman nodded. "We don't know. Traumas, especially in so young children, can result in a case of memory loss, affecting the traumatizing event. He couldn't tell us how he got to be in the sea. He might remember something later, but nobody can tell how much and what."

Knuckles looked down on his feet. "Anything about his family?"

"Apparently he was with his parents. No sign of them yet, though." Nelly's soft gaze briefly flicked over to the sleeping hedgehog in the next room. "He speaks of an Uncle Chuck, but without a surname it will be hard to find him. The police have tried, but not near all Mobians are officially recorded. As it is, no-one seems to know much about a little hedgehog called Sonic. If that even is a real name." Nelly sighed. "Who knows? He's likely too small to know most of the important things. He's only five." She paused for a heavy moment of utter silence. "The only thing the investigation came up with is that during the storm a ship sunk about 80 miles offshore of South Island. As far as we know, there are no survivors… other than little Sonic in there. The police said the ship came from a place called Christmas Island, an isle popular to many people. Maybe he's a Christmas Island native. Maybe his family was just on a holiday trip there. Ferries are always full, and tourists come from pratically everywhere on Mobius." She let out a deep breath. "Nothing that helps us." Her eyes wandered over to the still Knuckles sitting next to her. "Can you?"

The echidna looked into her expectant face for a moment, then lowered his gaze. "I'm sorry… I wish I could."

She nodded understandingly. "Well, that's not your fault."

Knuckles inclined his head, remaining silent. She was right. It wasn't his fault. He couldn't just go and tell her he was a time traveller that would get to know this little orphan in six years from now. Impossible. Most likely she wouldn't believe him, and if that little Sonic saw him, he'd probably recognize him later when they actually met. Telling her he knew Sonic would maybe cause one of these paradoxes Sonic, the older Sonic, had said they had to try avoiding if they didn't want to change history's course in unpredictable ways.

And anyway, what did he know that could be of help for this little blue hedgehog in the room across of him? He thought Sonic had mentioned an Uncle Chuck once or twice, but Knuckles had never met him, let alone had any idea where to find the guy. No, Knuckles knew nothing helpful about Sonic at all, and for reasons he wasn't entirely able to pinpoint, the notion stung uncomfortably. If at all, what Nelly had just told him had been new to him. He had learned something totally unexpected about Sonic today, something that seemed to explain even his sometimes so idiotic hydrophobia.

"No, it's not my fault, but that doesn't help him, either." He stood up and sighed upon glancing at the sleeping hedgehog, feeling an unfamilar pang of pity. He didn't usually pity _Sonic_. There was never any need for that... He was Sonic. Anything like pity was out of place there. Still, he looked so... _tiny_...

Nelly stood up as well, her hazel eyes resting on Sonic even as she spoke. "No."

"Who will take care of him now?", Knuckles couldn't keep himself from asking.

"Hopefully some family will be found. If he's got an uncle out there, we'll find him. I'll find him." She sighed. "I have to. And he better be enthusiastic about raising his little blue nephew." A little, but fierce smile pushed the gentle concern off her face and Knuckles realized she wasn't merely as caring as she'd appeared so far, but could probably get her ways across pretty well if she wanted to.

A small smirk formed on his face as well and Knuckles nodded, not mentioning he would probably win the bet that this particular little hedgehog would be a pain to bring up. "Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry I couldn't do anything useful."

The purple otter nodded, the warmth quickly pooling back into her eyes. "It's okay. Thank you anyway."

Knuckles shook his head. "I wasn't of any help, was I?"

She shrugged, offering him a smile he didn't think he deserved. "It was good talking about it, I think. You're a good listener."

The echidna blinked. "You're the first person ever saying that."

Nelly appeared surprised. "Really? Well, someone's gotta start it, right? There's a first for everything."

"I guess so, yes." Knuckles nodded awkwardly, suddenly remembering he should perhaps be going. "Oh, could you still tell me which way out of here is again?" A sheepish smile fought its way to his face.

He earned a smile back. "Of course."

After hearing out her directions and saying his goodbye, Knuckles briefly looked at the little blue hedgehog one last time. _Good luck, little guy. See you in six years on my island, and then I'm gonna punch you in the face. _A smile dashed over his features at the thought. _But you know, we'll both get over it. It won't be the last time, anyway. You're too much of an annoying brat at times.  
_

* * *

Crawling out from underneath the machine, Tails wheezed out a deep sigh. "That was the last screw to tighten I think," he said, turning the screwdriver around in his hands and looking over to his raccoon friend.

Archibald's eyes lay fixed on the machine and he shot Tails just a short glance at his words. "Doesn't look too bad for improvised, doesn't it?"

Nodding his head in a small onset of pride, the two-tailed fox cast his eyes over their work again. In less than nine hours they had gotten it up from blank papers over blue prints to finished and hopefully functional. Now it filled up a good third of the large laboratory. In the center of layers of electrical wires, capacitors and Tesla coils about the size of Tails himself sat a large ring, three meters in diameter, the metal material it was made from glazing in polished silver.

Connected by probably miles of cables to the observatory's equipment, this ring was the most vital part of their creation. A loop antenna of a kind never build before, not even by Robotnik. The only machine ever created to track down a chaos field impulse, hold on to it and redirect it to its center. A programmed chaos control…

If it worked.

If not... Tails bit his lip. He didn't want to think about that. Nobody could tell where Sonic and Knuckles were at the moment, or worse, _if_ they still were...

The feeling wasn't exactly new to Tails, but that didn't make it any better at all. He had been through several occassions of Sonic or another one of his friends had been missing, or thought dead. He would never get used to it. He didn't want to. Everytime again, he hoped deeply he would never go through this horror again. The waiting, the often useless attempts to find out where his missing friends were, if they were alright, and the equally often useless attempts to help them.

Sometimes, Tails felt like it was his fault they didn't get back quickly. Sonic never got lost in _normal_ situations. Every now and then, Tails wished the hedgehog would just lose his directions on the way home and end up in some part of a city he didn't know, asking around for a map. No, Sonic never got merely _lost_. He always ended up shooting himself into space, got stuck in parallel dimensions, or was almost killed by giant robots and monsters that looked like they came right from the bottom of _hell_. Tails wanted to help. He hated knowing Sonic in danger and being of no use to him.

Essentially, that was what he usually felt like. Sonic ran off and something awful happened. Then, Tails struggled to help him, somehow, someway. Sometimes, he found a way. Most of the time Sonic managed to come back on his own at some point, thankfully alive and in one piece, more or less. It was the less that worried Tails sick. He wanted to help. He wanted to make sure his best friend and only family member would come back, without getting half killed or anything equally horrifying.

Unfortunately, like most times, all he could do was _try_. _Try_. Sometimes it seemed such a pathetic thing.

There was nobody to guarantee him their chaos control antenna machine would work as intended. They thought it would, but it was a prototype. Something the world had never seen before. When they activated it, it would be little more than a test run, a blind shot in the dark.

Tails hated the idea they were basically shooting at Sonic and Knuckles, but there was nothing much he could do. There was just one chance. They would have to take it.

Shaking off his thoughts, Tails focused back on the professor, struggling to stay professional and occupy his mind with something else but worries. "How are our programs?"

"Online and functional, as it seems." The yellow raccoon pointed at the screen, skipping on the long pause and the depressed notion Tails was sure was as clear on his face as painted there in the brightest neon colors.

In a way, Tails was glad the professor didn't press him to talk about what was obvious anyway. Instead, he found a hand on his shoulder that offered a friendly pat. Nothing like a brotherly hug from Sonic, but it felt warm and a tad bit reassuring. He gave the raccoon a grateful smile.

Archibald smiled back, squeezing his shoulder again, then returning his look to the screens. "We got clear track of both fields."

Tails nodded, deciding to be happy with that bit of good news at the moment. "Perfect. Let's hope we keep them. How long to the next peak?"

"Thirteen hours. We might as well take a break, Tails."

If he was being honest with himself, the young fox knew he needed one. He was beyond tired by now. There wasn't anything he could do at the moment anyway, so he reluctantly agreed.

* * *

A white-gloved hand was waved in front of his face. "Knuckles?! Hey, Mobius to Angel Island, come in!"

Snapping out of his thoughts, the red echidna stared at Sonic, standing next to him on the pavement just in front of the hospital. "What?"

The blue hedgehog tilted his head at him, a slight frown on his face. "Are you okay? You kinda zoned out on me there!"

For another moment Knuckles could only stare at the hedgehog. What should he say to him, anyway? That he'd just seen a ten years younger version of him and was contemplating to never make any jokes on his hydrophobia again? What would Sonic do? Run back in there to see it himself? Knuckles couldn't let him do that, so he better kept his quiet.

"Knuckles? Hello?" Sonic walked in front of him, watching him with a look of rarely seen worry.

The echidna was well aware he was expecting an answer, but his brain was still busy noticing Sonic had grown to more than twice the size he'd apparently once been. It wasn't like Knuckles saw children every day, let alone get shown how one of his friends had looked like as a little kid. He was somewhat lost for words. "I.. I just got some stuff on my mind, I think. This whole time travel thing…"

"Uh-hu." Sonic nodded, visibly relaxing when Knuckles finally answered him. "And your first encounter with hospitals."

"Yeah, that too." Knuckles smiled, doing his best to shove his thoughts aside. Hoping it might help, he finally focussed on their surroundings.

Usually, Knuckles would have rated the air on the streets of the city as stinky. Right now, it felt fresh as paradise as he closed his eyes for a second, deeply filling his lungs with it, more than glad to get the smell that had occupied all the corridors and rooms of the building out of his nostrils. How where people supposed to recover from illnesses and stuff in that atmosphere? The brightly white furniture and all those people rushing around didn't actually help making the place any more comfy to stay at… Once again Knuckles was stricken by the thought of how weird the surface dwellers were. But as it seemed, at least their healers knew their medicine. His arm had gotten to the decision to throb dully, but it was bearable.

"I think they are glad we're gone in there," Sonic spoke up again. "I guess they think we're nuts."

"Doesn't matter what they think, but it seems you were right. They did not bad at the doctoring," the echidna noticed.

Sonic smiled. "It's their job, Knuckles, they do it all day."

Knuckles looked over to his friend. "Hm. I'm happy to be out of there again."

The blue hedgehog chuckled. "Nobody's fond of hospitals, I guess. That goes for you as much as for everybody else. You are maybe less different from us non-Angel-Island people than you think."

Knuckles frowned. "Hmm," he grunted doubtfully.

Sonic grinned. "Come on and let's get somewhere more comfortable, what do you think? I think we deserve it. It was quite a day, and I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry, hedgehog." Knuckles earned a mockingly hurt look and tried to irgnore it. That was his usual reaction to it, anyway, but it seemed he was having a weak moment right now. His stomach felt weird, and he decided to take it as hunger and not as 'I'm about to be sick'.

"Actually, that sounds not too bad," he allowed, "I've had nothing all day."

"Let's find ourselves a nice place to hang out then." Sonic started walking along the street, but stopped when Knuckles didn't follow.

The echidna was frowning again, disturbed by the hedgohog's sudden display of relaxation. "Are you sure we should be just walking around in public here?"

Sonic shrugged casually. "Why not? It's five years before Eggman turned up. Nobody ever heard of Sonic the Hedgehog or Knuckles the Echidna from Angel Island. The mere existence of your place is still somewhat of a mystery. This is one of the first times in our lives we can walk along the street without anyone recognizing us at all and no robots turning up to hit or shoot us. We should enjoy it!"

Processing the thought, Knuckles could only agree. Sonic was right. "You got a point." Knuckles nodded stiffly and quickly moved to catch up with the hedgehog.

The hedgehog laughed. "No reason for hurrying," he said and shot him a smiling side-glance. "We don't have to rush anything, do we? There are no enemies stealing our Emeralds right behind the next corner."

Knuckles tilted his head at Sonic, finally managing to find his dry tone back. "We don't have any. If we had any, we might be closer to getting back home."

"Do you always have to be so negative?" Sonic shook his head, ears twitching. "Really, we're stuck in a strange time, weird stuff happens and you got your arm busted. We need a bit of good spirit. You could at least _try_, you know?"

"Uh." The red echidna ran his flat left hand down his long spines, not sure why he felt suddenly embarrassed. "Sorry?"

"I don't really mind, I guess," the hedgehog assured, grinning good-naturedly. "It's who you are. And everybody needs to be himself, so you're just fine."

Knuckles smiled, although he didn't know why he did. He didn't really follow Sonic's logic in the last few sentences of their conversation, but for once he thought he had not been trying to insult him, his Emerald or his ancestry. For a moment they walked in companionable silence along the traffic-stuffed road, then the echidna remembered another thing that had stuck out to him. "Sonic?"

"Hmm?"

"What's tetanus?"

"An illness, kind of an infection you can get when injured," the hedgehog explained simply, not giving Knuckles any chance to determine if his question had been stupid again now or not. "It was pretty dangerous in former times and many people died on it, today you get such a small shot against it and that's it. In the past, I guess you could get a bad fever or catalepsy."

Knuckles nodded. "Then I think I know what we're talking about. Why do you use so weird words down here?"

Sonic laughed. "Dunno. Sounds stylish maybe… Or it makes people feel smart. Like when Tails says things like electro-muon-plasma-" He ran out of words to add to his chain at that point and decided to finish with a "thingy".

Knuckles raised an eyebrow. As he thought before, the surface people were odd… In the past as much as in the present time.

* * *

"So? How do you like it?" Dropping leisurely into a chair, Sonic gestured around. The small restaurant was situated at a small square, just a narrow street separating them from the beach. The ocean twinkled as a sea of sapphires and the sky above was a flawless coat of cyan.

"It's nice alright," Knuckles agreed, sitting himself across of Sonic, carefully resting his arm in a position approaching comfortable. "You seem to know the place pretty well."

Sonic shrugged. "I grew up around here."

"Where'd you live? Just asking so we don't run into you or something…" From the very corner of his eyes Knuckles watched his friend suspiciously.

The hedgehog had grabbed a piece of paper lying on the table and seemed more interested in reading it than listening to Knuckles. "Almost outside town, at my Uncle Chuck's." He was silent for a moment before looking up from his paper. "It was nice there."

"Your uncle?" Trying to pretend a bit of disinterest, Knuckles studied his cast.

"Yeah," Sonic willingly replied, still utterly clueless. "I once asked what had happened to my parents and they told me they died in a bad accident. I didn't ask much. I was happy. I had my own room, a swing in the garden and all that stuff you love when you're small. Of course, there was stuff he did I didn't enjoy so much." Sonic chuckled a little at the memory. "Him insisting I took bathes every so often, or my going to school for example. By now I think it was good he forced me to, kinda. A kid's gotta learn reading and stuff, right?"

Knuckles smiled, briefly looking up at Sonic. "I suppose so. Strange fit of common sense coming from _you._"

Sonic laughed. "It's not like I don't have any of it. Just not very much, and I rarely listen to it." For a moment he watched his fingers drumming onto the table. "No, I think I was pretty lucky I had him. Everyone needs a place to come and go whenever you need. He never complained… You know, even when I was small, I sometimes just had this feeling of… having to go. Not because the place wasn't nice, it's about the going itself. There's always been something driving me away, not necessarily for long, but away. Seeing something else, just… moving, running. I dunno what it is, but it's always been in me. Not many people understand. Tails does. And my uncle did. I explained it once and he just understood. He understood a hell of a lot of things…"

Knuckles just looked at him. They didn't talk often, Sonic and him, and even more rarely on things so personal. Trying to take in what the hedgehog tried to explain, Knuckles wondered for a moment if Sonic felt something that could be compared to his need of returning home to Angel Island after a time spend elsewhere… just the other way around. "What happened to him?", the echidna asked, finally stopping to examine the white cast on his arm.

"Robotnik happened." The smile quickly vanished from Sonic's face. "It's probably the only thing I will never forgive him. That he builds robots trying to toast me, electrocute me or cut me apart… okay. But not that…" His gaze dropped down onto his hands.

"… I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked." Knuckles uncomfortably shifted his weight. It wasn't often you could look behind Sonic's casual demeanour, and it was intimidating to say the least.

"Nah, it's fine. Been a long time, huh?" Sonic looked back up at him, a small smirk already fighting off the seriousness. "And it's a thing we all share. Tails never had a family before I found him, I lost mine, and you… you don't remember your folks either, do you?"

Knuckles shook his head. "No. I've always been by myself up there." He tilted his head, realizing he'd never contemplated the parallels between them. "What about the others? Cream's got her mum… What's with Amy?"

Sonic shrugged. "No idea. I have never really talked to her about stuff like that. She's just kind of... _there_, running after me. Now that I think about it, I have really no idea what she does when she's not following me around. Maybe she has a family after all. She's got a last name..." The blue hedgehog shrugged again, reaching for the paper again. "Now if you ask me, that was enough of the serious talk for today. This whole time travel thing blows my head bad enough…And I'm gonna starve if I don't get anything soon."

The red echidna chuckled, half-heartedly cursing himself for this anew moment of weakness as he gave in. "What's on the menu?"

* * *

_Speedy's note: Sonic's past is a thing that was never really touched in the games at all. It's kind of funny once you think about it. They have backstories for Shadow, for Tails, we even know more about Eggman's past and family than we know about the main protagonist's. I've been resisting to write anything on it for more than four years, but I couldn't resist a little shot at it forever. This is a time travel story. I pretty much gave myself carte blanche for all sorts of things like that._

_Also, greetings to Kelvin, if you happen to read this. Just for the record, there's food to add to my fail count. ;) In all honesty, they deserve it, don't you think?_


	11. Detached

**Detached**

After quite a lot of Sonic's proclaimed emergency money had been spent on their dinner, the two friends concluded they really didn't have the money for a hotel room. Luckily, the summer night was promising to be mildly warm. They had headed out of town again and upon finding a small clearing next to a softly gurgling creek decided to stay there for now.

Now darkness had fallen and since time travel apparently was a rather exhausting activity, there had been not much talk. There had been a lot more talk than both of them were used to earlier, anyways…

Knuckles shifted on the thick moss and grass. It was actually rather comfortable, and yet he was unable to get any shut-eye, what was at least partly to be blamed on his broken arm. Whatever stuff he'd been given back at the hospital, it had been good while it lasted, but by now it had clearly worn off and the injured limb was throbbing angrily, every beat of his heart pouring liquid fire down from his elbow to his wrist.

In an act of almost reflex Knuckles had once again tried getting a grip on the Master Emerald's power, but the incomprehendable barriers were still there. He couldn't feel it, and of course this particular fact prevented any use of the magical energy to ease pain and speed up the healing process. Knuckles couldn't remember when he had not felt at least a little stroke of soothing Emerald warmth tending his hurts. Normally, it was there even if he didn't actively strive for it.

Guardianship was more than sitting and watching over the Master Emerald to keep evil minds from abusing its powers. It was a bond, a bond closer than anything else Knuckles knew. The Master Emerald was a part of him, and he was a part of it. It was a symbiosis; on the long run Knuckles wasn't sure if he could exist without the Master. It could for sure exist without him, had done so for thousands or millions of years, possibly eternity; but could it exist without any guardian? Knuckles didn't know, but knew the Emerald cared for its guardians just as much as they cared for it. Without each other, neither was… complete.

Knuckles didn't expect anyone could ever understand this feeling. He knew from rare conversations with Sonic on the topic that turning super and unifying your body and soul with the seven Chaos Emeralds was a similar thing; but unlike the link between Knuckles and the Master Emerald it was always temporary. After a short time, you'd turn back to normal, breaking the bond that had formed. Knuckles guessed a part of it stayed behind, was always present in those who could interact with the Emeralds.

Now, torn loose from the time and place and Emerald he belonged to, there was no caring flow of the Master's energy tending his wounds. There was just the pain… and the emptiness. Emptiness from inside, and Knuckles wasn't sure if the broken bone or the broken bond hurt more. Anyway, both combined made for a level of discomfort that didn't allow any realistic thoughts on sleep.

Once more rolling over, the red echidna tried again finding a comfortable position in the moss. He was tired, he really was. If you'd never experienced real pain, you couldn't tell how utterly exhausting it was. Odd, Knuckles mused, that the same thing mostly causing his grogginess was what kept him from finding rest.

Sonic was a different matter; no worries about being lost in time and space seemed capable of disturbing his sleep. The blue hedgehog had tucked into a loose ball, using one arm as a pillow, the large, blue quills lying in relaxed curves. He wasn't actually snoring, but Knuckles' ears were sharp, the night was quiet and so the echidna could hear his friend's deep, calm breathing.

Combined with the gently gurgling creek, after a while Knuckles didn't find the sound so annoying anymore. It was a regular sound, mending in nicely with the small noises of the night time forest around. By now too tired to contemplate his worries anymore, Knuckles found himself just listening to it. After a while the echidna slipped into that certain light slumber that had you drifting between a half-awareness and bizarre dreams, a confusing semi-reality completely blurring the border between what was real and what was just a construction of your imagination. The stars were already beginning to dim when exhaustion finally did its job and Knuckles was granted dreamless, deep sleep.

When he awoke from it there was sunlight on his face and he could tell by the way he felt as if run over by one of Eggman's bigger and uglier vehicle creations that whatever today was going to bring, it wasn't going to be his day for sure. Sitting up reluctantly, he ran his hand over his face with a groan.

"I was about to say 'Good morning', but you don't look as if you'd agree with me."

Knuckles turned his head, finding Sonic sitting crossed-legged on the grass, a pile of fruits in front of him. He carefully crawled to his feet and stumbled the few steps over to the creek. "No."

The expected sarcastic reply about morning people or his mood didn't come. Sonic remained quiet while Knuckles took a drink and splashed some water on his face. Most confused by this abnormal silence the echidna turned around, finding his friend sitting still and watching him, head titled aside and a notion of concern on his face.

Meeting Knuckles' gaze Sonic dropped his, indicating the fruits before him. "I searched around for some breakfast while you were still asleep," he said. "I thought it might be better trying to spare our money. You like these, don't you?"

Knuckles nodded, sitting next to the hedgehog and accepting the grapes held out at him. Saying he liked him would be an understatement. They were his favourite food, and he was secretly as crazy for them as Sonic for his beloved chilli dogs. Putting the first of the small, green fruits into his mouth, he felt a bit of delight surge through him at the sweet taste. There were grapes and grapes, and these were _grapes_.

Sonic didn't say anything while Knuckles finished the bunch of grapes he'd been given, but held out another portion when the echidna finished the last. Spirits lifted a little, Knuckles shot him a thankful smile.

Chewing lazily on an apple, Sonic watched Knuckles eat. "Better?", he asked softly when the echidna finished and Knuckles nodded.

"Yeah…"

The blue hedgehog smiled. "Good breakfast makes up for a crappy night."

Knuckles cocked an eyebrow. "Is it that obvious, huh?"

"Pretty much." Sonic shrugged. "Take it easy. Happens to all of us once in a while."

The guardian grunted in annoyance. Still, he actually felt a little better now, and the circumstances irked him a little.

"So," Sonic spoke up again. "You feeling ready to beat this day?"

"How do you plan on beating it?"

"I dunno, try to find a way back home I guess."

Knuckles supressed a groan. "Wonderful plan. Be my guide then…"

Shaking his head, Sonic looked at him with a strange mingle of exasperation and honest to chaos apology on his face. "Hey, I'm really sorry, but I don't know anything we could do either. What I do know is that if we just sit around here we won't find anything that helps us, so we can at least go and try doing… y'know, _something_."

Knuckles sighed. "Yeah, right, I guess you... got a point there."

"See?" A small smile was back on Sonic's face, pushing apology away for exasperation to stay behind, though not as obvious as before. "Then heads up and let's go."

"Alright." Knuckles finally stood up. For a moment he looked around cluelessly, and then decided he could as well take it out on Sonic. "Which way then, smart-ass?"

The blue hedgehog chuckled, also exasperation gone all of a sudden. "I like you better that way," he grinned.

Knuckles smiled a little in spite of himself. "Then do your best getting us out of this mess."

"Will do!" Sonic's grin broadened as he mimicked a salute, then he pointed into an apparently randomly chosen direction. "Away we go!"

About to ask what qualified that way as a better choice than the other possible directions, Knuckles had already opened his mouth, but he closed it again without a sound. He was tingling. A second after it started, his head started to throb adizziness sweeped over him in a numbing rush.

"What the…?" Through slightly blurred vision, he stared at Sonic.

The hedgehog was clutching his head, face crunched up and ears flattened against his head. "Not… again…", he pressed out.

Knuckles wanted to answer him, but the world around him, including his blue friend, was going ever brighter and brighter until everything was white. Whatever Knuckles had planned on saying was lost somewhere on the way from his brain to his mouth. It was as if both were stopping to exist. His head felt as if a thick wedge was slowly driving into his brains, splitting his skull and its contents in two. The echidna remembered trying to reach for his forehead, but he couldn't move and then he was falling through an endless tunnel of white nothingness.

He landed surprisingly on his feet, struggling to keep any sort of balance without knowledge on which way was up or down or… _something_. It took another couple of seconds until the brightness dimmed away and the headache dulled. Blinking his eyes rapidly to adjust his hazy vision, Knuckles' head whirled around, trying to get used to what was around him.

Turning one time on the spot, he found he was standing on a squared of some sort, surrounded by tall buildings that seemed to be constructed entirely out of glass, or at least some other mirroring surface. Akin to the skyscrapers of Metropolis, the buildings struck high up into the sky, the glazing walls spotted with large neon light signs in brightly glowing colours.

He'd landed in some kind of big city, and just as expected he wasn't alone. A dozen pairs of eyes were staring back at him, filled with disbelief, confusion, shock. Not quite surprising, Knuckles mused, he'd probably look the same if someone suddenly fell out of thin air right in front of him. He was still searching for something remotely intelligent to say when the so far silent Mobians around him picked up an exited murmur.

An orange chameleon dressed in knee-high boots made out of some sort of silvery material stretched his arm out, pointing a finger in an equally silver glove at the red echidna. "Police! Someone call the police!"

"Hey, take it easy, will ya?" Knuckles didn't think he need any more trouble.

"Leave him alone!", a person behind him shouted when the echidna all but lifted his hand in what was supposed to turn into a calming gesture. A pair of hands grabbed his shoulder.

Knuckles twisted away. "Hey!"

"Police!", someone called again. "A teleporter!"

Not really having the time to look at the person, Knuckles managed to yank free of the Mobians trying to restrain him. He ducked away and made a quick dash out of the mob. Truth be told, he had no idea where he was going, but he knew staying here wasn't quite the best idea. He didn't really feel like picking a fight. He was hardly a push-over and rarely actually minded a quarrel with anyone, but he was one arm down, his head stilll felt nothing short of weird, and he was confused. Actually, he didn't even know what he'd done wrong or who these people were...

Running to the edge of the square and down a broad road that followed, Knuckles found that the way he'd chosen by chance didn't bring him away from people. Standing on weird things that looked like tiny floating platforms with a vertical stick attached to them, numerous Mobians of different races and colours were speeding down was seemed a lot like a local highway.

"Strange sorta Gear," Knuckles mumbled under his breath as he hastened past them. The things actually reminded him of Extreme Gear, they just didn't have the streak of energy trailing them. Trying to keep to the side of the road and avoid collisions with the rather speedy vehicles Knuckles hasted onwards.

The sound of sirens behind let his head turn around to look over his shoulder. Slaloming around the traffic, two riding platforms equipped with blue flashing lights manned by two koalas in black and grey uniforms were right on his tail.

Allowing a curse to slip through his lips, Knuckles turned back around, for once wishing he was as fast of a runner as Sonic. It wasn't that he was slow, in fact he was quite a quick-footed fellow, but unlike his blue friend, Knuckles didn't outrun things like fast cars or Extreme Gear boards and bikes. A hasty glace back proved him right that also the strange platform things belonged to that category of stuff that was unfortunately faster than him.

Grimly Knuckles shot a look around. Change of strategies then… He flanked over the low beam barrier, apparently a green-tinted force field spanned along the road, and headed right for the wall of the closest sky scraper. _See if they can climb on these things…_

Lashing out with his left fist, the echidna drove the spikes spearheading his namesakes into the wall. Even though it looked like glass, it either was something entirely different or a special glass of some sort. Unlike he had feared, the mirroring material didn't splinter when he punched out at it. Like stone… "Good then," he muttered, pulling his feet up against the wall as well.

Although a natural climber and very, very experienced at it, his progress was almost ridiculous. He had only one hand to use. The first meters he thought he would just fall down again, then he found a way how to time the process of shifting his weight as much into the wall as possible, pull his spikes free, and quickly move his hand up for another hold before he fell down. It was straining and the timing required concentration, but he was actually progressing upwards.

"Hey! Come down here immediately, citizen! You are under arrest!"

Glancing down, Knuckles found the two policemen had stopped and where standing under him, one of them gesturing with what looked uncomfortably like a gun.

"What'd I do?!", Knuckles called down, in vague hope he could clear whatever misunderstanding was going on here.

"You have been observed performing an illegal teleportation, prohibited by the tenth anti-teleportation act, paragraph twelve and following. There's no need denying anything, more than twenty citizens have seen you. If you hand yourself over now, we will refrain from using violence."

Knuckles shook his head, more to himself than the two below. "This is nuts… just nuts. Illegal teleportation paragraph whatsoever. Screw you guys…" He continued to climb higher.

"I repeat this one last time, you are under arrest. Get away from this wall!", the policeman shouted.

"As if," Knuckles mumbled, not stopping or even looking down again. They wouldn't actually shoot him while he was climbing… would they?

"We warned you!"

"Yeah, yeah… you –" Shooting a quick glance down, the echidna stared at the police guys. One of them was still holding the presumed gun, the other some sort of even larger thing. Rocket launcher…? "They're not really serious…"

A second later Knuckles knew they were indeed serious. The tip of the gun pointing at him gave a pulsing glow like some of Eggman's laser weapons tended to do before they fired, then a pale blue bolt of light shot out of it. Knuckles tried to dodge as good as he could hanging in a rather slippery wall by just two of his knucklespikes. The light hit his left arm. It was as if icy water had been poured over it. The muscles shivered for a second or two before going limp. Knuckles struggled to keep his fist clenched so he wouldn't lose his hold, but he couldn't feel his hand anymore.

"Aaahhhhhh!"

A second shot caught him in his back as he fell. It stole his control over the rest of his body and he fell like a sack, unable to do anything about it. His mind struggled to regain the control it had lost and twist his fall into a safe glide, but his body wouldn't respond.

The fall ended abruptly, cushioned by a softly glowing round projected into thin air by the thing Knuckles had thought was a rocket launcher. It held him about a foot above the ground for a couple of seconds, then the officer operating the mysterious device lowered it and the energy carpet or whatever you could call it vanished, releasing Knuckles' dead weight and he fell the last bit onto the asphalt.

Refraining from giving a sound affirming the pain it caused, the echidna glared up at the two uniformed koalas. "Are you crazy?! I could be dead!"

The officer with the force field throwing rocket launcher thing shrugged quite uninterested. "It's your own fault. Criminals are treated without mercy." He turned to his comrade. "Search him for weapons."

Kneeling down next to Knuckles, the policeman checked him for pockets on shoes or gloves. The echidna tried to twist away, but he couldn't move a muscle.

Apparently seeing the struggle on his face, the first officer spoke up again. "You'll regain the ability to move in about twenty minutes by the strength of the shot. But by that time you'll already be locked away where you can't commit any more crimes."

Knuckles shot him a death glare, but remained silent.

"Sir, I can't find any weapons. Neither his teleporting device or his ID."

"Probably dropped it somewhere. We'll call for backup and tell them to search for his things on the way to the station. If they don't find his ID, checking the hospitals for who treated this arm of his should help us identifying him." The officer turned back to Knuckles on the ground. "Or do you have anything interesting to say? Your name, profession, identification number?"

Unable to even turn his head away, Knuckles closed his eyes. He hated being that helpless.

"Didn't think so," the policeman continued. "Remind me that the observers of his crime should be asked if anyone can confirm his identity."

"I can't even really pinpoint his _species_," the other officer noticed.

"Some kind porcupine or hedgehog. Spiky." Opening his eyes again, Knuckles looked up at his captors. They were slowly walking a few steps away from him. "Call the transporter so we can get him in a cell."

Knuckles let his eyes fall close again. Had he thought he was screwed before? He had been wrong. _Now_ he was screwed. Epically.

* * *

Anxiously Tails paced the room, every two to three seconds staring up at the screen recording the fields' activity. "Come on…"

If Archibald was as nervous as Tails he did a good job of hiding it. The professor sat in his chair, not quite upright, but alert yet calm eyes keeping the graphs in view. "I guess we're almost there, Tails."

Tails moved to stand next to him. "Should I activate the Emerald?"

Archibald nodded tightly, sitting upright and flexing his fingers. "Go for it."

Complying, Tails pulled a lever on their makeshift dashboard, connecting the Chaos Emerald he'd taken out of the Tornado to the current of their machine. For a couple seconds the lighting in the lab flickered erratically, then it stabilized and the big ring was glowing in the Emerald's purple colour.

"The Emerald's ready!", the fox announced.

"The fields are reaching peak in… three…two… one…NOW!" The raccoon's hand slammed down onto a giant button in front of him.

The purple Emerald was glowing like a tiny sun, every inch of wiring making up the machine starting to steam the same violet light. The neon lights on the ceiling made a cracking noise before shutting down and the power generator attached to the machine blew up like a huge firecracker.

Acting before he even fully realized what was going on, Tails hit the emergency switch, keeping the damage from claiming the rest of the lab's equipment.

Just a moment later, a strange silence filled the large room, the broken generator hiccupping out small flames and sparks, and the Chaos Emerald's shine slowly dimming back to normal. Also the antenna ring had stopped glowing.

Tails took a few deep breaths. There was no Sonic or Knuckles magically back with them, just an amount of busted machinery. "It didn't work…", he whispered, crumbling into a chair.

Archibald nodded numbly, just looking at the young fox. They didn't need words to know neither had an idea what had gone wrong.


	12. Brave New World

**Brave New World  
**

By the time the brightness behind his eyes faded slowly and the headache dulled away, Sonic instead noticed he was feeling his knees a lot more than was usual. Shaking his head to chase of the remaining dizziness, the hedgehog picked himself up, brushing his hands down his legs where he'd apparently hit the floor. After he'd ascertained he'd received nothing worse than slight sore spots, Sonic looked around.

The hard soil he'd landed on turned out to not be soil at all. Rather, it was glazed tiling, polished to near perfection. A pale, slightly blue-tinted light filled the room and the air carried the soft scent of some sort of soap that reminded him way too much of Rouge's preferred perfume. Somewhere in the ceiling above his head, a ventilator gave off a small noise that suggested something was stuck between its rotors. The wall in front of him was divided by several small doors of a kind that finally clued the disorientated hedgehog in on what sort of room he'd landed in.

"Huh. Bathroom," he muttered. Turning his head around, he now located a row of sinks as well. "Hm." Sonic shrugged to himself and strolled towards the door that looked like the exit to him.

When he stretched out his hand towards the doorknob, the white door swung open suddenly and just a quick, reflexive supersonic jump aside saved his nose from unpleasantly meeting the edge of the door. He'd just recovered when he found himself nose-to-bill with a female Mobian… swallow maybe. Some kinda bird, with purple feathers and wearing a perfume that insulted his nose even harder than the soapy scent of the bathroom.

Even though he wasn't entirely able to pinpoint her species, there was still something Sonic was very sure about concerning her. She had a very annoying, high-pitched voice. Her scream pierced right into his still slightly aching skull, causing Sonic's hands to snap upwards to cover his mutilated ears.

"Chill it, okay?!" She still didn't stop screaming and Sonic had to shout to make himself audible.

Her bill finally closed, but she stared at him with wide open eyes for a couple of long seconds, then her head slowly turned to the front of the still ajar door, remained there for another few moments before turning back to Sonic. "This is the ladies'!", she screeched.

"Oh. Uh… I must have gotten the wrong door then... Sorry," Sonic mumbled, quickly pushing past her and using some of his namesake speed to slip out into a blank corridor. A quick glance to the right revealed this direction to be a dead end and the blue hedgehog followed the corridor towards the left.

It wasn't long. Pushing the broad swinging doors open, Sonic stepped into a large room. The noise of hundreds of people chattering suddenly sounded from all around him and countless people were rushing past, shoving others out of their ways. Sonic just stopped where he was, green eyes wide with awe as he slowly took in his surroundings.

The room he'd landed in was at least as big as a stadium and just about as high. At the walls on the sides of the huge room, giant glowing tubes led vertically up towards higher, half-transparent platforms floating without any visible support a good ten meters above his head. Sonic just stood and stared as a group of Mobians walked towards the nearest glowing tube thing without altering their pace. The moment they moved into the light, they slowly started ascending as if suddenly weightless.

Sonic shook his head, forcing his eyes away from the glowy elevator things. He could see people walking on the platforms above his head, turning around what maybe were some sort of shelves. Halfway up to the next floor, large floating banners glittered in neon lighting, advertising the goods offered in the shops below, somewhere in the mess of people, glowing stuff and stands.

"Wow," Sonic breathed as he slowly walked forwards, absentmindedly dodging people, his eyes still wandering around. "This is way past cool…"

* * *

Hours had passed and only a very sensitive nose could still pick up the faint smell of charred wires. The electricity was back working and the computers apparently had survived without major damage.

Tails read through the protocols of their failed attempt the hundredth time in the past hour. "I just don't get it. What did we do wrong?"

Shaking his head in a gesture of defeat, Archibald dropped against his chair's back. "I have no idea, my friend. According to this data, something went wrong with our frequency."

"But… we got it right from scanning the Chaos Emerald! There can't be any mistakes," Tails shouted. He didn't understand why their machine had not worked. He didn't understand why he didn't understand… He was tired. He wanted Sonic and Knuckles back. Now. He had failed to help them… The little fox sniffled.

"Hey, hey, don't cry, Tails!" Standing from his chair, the older raccoon moved to comfort his younger friend, though awkwardly. In some distant corner of his mind, Tails was sure the professor had not really comforted anyone in quite a while, but the little fox appreciatedly his trying. It didn't make up for Sonic not being there, but it was much better than being all alone in this.

Deciding to go with whatever comfort he could get, Tails relaxed a little, leaned into the professor's shoulder and muffled a sob to manage speaking. "We have to help Sonic…"

"We will!" Archibald petted his back, more like one strokes a chao or other pet, but it made Tails feel a little better anyway. "We will for sure. We'll reset the frequency and try again. Maybe we entered it incorrectly or something…"

_Frequency_. Tails started, then pulled out of the awkward hug, wiping tears from his eyes. "The frequency… We got the wrong frequency!"

"Probably, yes."

"No, we really have the wrong frequency! We got the wrong Chaos Emerald!"

The professor blinked, once, twice, thrice, then slapped his flat hand against his forehead. "How could we oversee _that_?!"

Tails excitedly trashed his double namesakes, the moment of depression melting away in lights of the discovery. "Each Emerald got a specific energy pattern. Since the chaos fields we want to catch were generated by another Emerald than ours here –"

" – also our frequency pattern can't be correct," Archibald finished for Tails. "So, we just need to get the right Emerald and – voilá!"

Tails stared at him, excitement slowly draining away again as his mind fully caught up. "There's just one problem. The Emerald we need is in Eggman's base."

"Oh."

* * *

Sonic had completely lost track of time strolling around in what he figured was some kind of mall – although that term was a serious understatement. There was so much to see, so much _new_ to see, he'd almost forgotten how he'd landed here. Hardly anything looked like things he knew...

It took a hungry growl from his stomach to get his mind back on track. Remembering that breakfast had been certainly a few hours ago also reminded him he'd not had breakfast alone… Where the heck was Knuckles?

The question unconsciously made Sonic turn a slow 360 on the spot. It wasn't really a sensible thing to do; there were so many people crowding this odd mall, so many stands selling some kind of stuff Sonic had never seen, that thinking he could just look around and discover his lost friend was if at all highly unrealistic.

Sonic frowned, his index finger brushing over the spot right below his nose. This place was huge… and pretty chaotic. How was he to find someone in here? … Granted Knuckles was even here, but the last times the weird Chaos time travel events had always dropped them not quite together but relatively close to each other. So Sonic considered his chances that the red echidna was somewhere around here better than non-existent at least.

Still, how did you best find someone who doesn't know the place if you don't know the place either and probably both of you are running around rather idiotically trying to find each other or the way out of this place neither of you knew?

The hedgehog's gaze wandered around aimlessly for a moment of thought. then he stopped at one of the elevator glow things. He was pretty sure Knuckles wouldn't set a foot in something like these things; technology he didn't understand how it worked was nothing like the echidna's speciality, but from up there he'd get a much better look around. Admittedly Sonic was also curious how a ride in this floaty elevator would be like… So it was a win-win situation, wasn't it?

Grinning to himself, the blue hedgehog pushed his way through a mass of people that hardly seemed to even register the shoves and elbows. He stopped in front of the shiny tube of energy, for a moment staring at it, then the idea how suspicious he had to look sank in and he stepped forwards into the circle of light on the floor. He barely touched it with both feet when he was lifted off and carried upwards. Much to Sonic's disappointment it didn't feel anything like floating; his feet still felt like standing on solid ground. Lifting his left foot a little so he could knock the tip of his shoe against whatever he was standing on, the hedgehog found there actually had to be something solid beneath him… you just couldn't _see_ anything there.

Sonic shook his head. "Freaky… but kinda cool."

The elevator reached the upper floor and Sonic hopped out of it, shooting it another strange glance before walking off. From up here the floor he stood on was semi-transparent, a pale yellowish plane of… something. Energy maybe. A force field like the paths in Grand Metropolis? Or just some fancy glass? Sonic shrugged. It didn't actually matter, did it?

What mattered more was where he'd landed here. The weird elevators, entire floors made of some kind of stuff he'd never seen before, stuff for selling he'd also never seen before, let alone had any idea what it actually was…

"Is this the future?", he mumbled, leaning over the railing framing the upper floor and looking down on the maze he'd walked through before. After all, they'd landed in the past two times before. Travelling to the future wasn't any more unrealistic if you thought about it… but to be fair, Sonic had lived through such an amount of unbelievable things he was tempted to believe everything. Why not the future? The idea was kind of cool, actually.

Sonic grinned to himself. So, if this was the future then… How far in the future? A hundred years from their time? A thousand? Would people know him and Knuckles? A part of Sonic wished so, wanted to be remembered for what he'd done. You'd think that defeating mad scientists and saving the planet from destruction a couple times should score you an entry in history books, right?

Yet, another part of Sonic almost thought it would be easier if nobody recognized them. The chances for some bad space-time screw-up or whatever could happen from their being here were smaller if they could just walk around without being recognized as the awesome heroes from the past they were, right? So far, no-one had taken notice of the blue hedgehog strolling pretty disorientated through this large mall, and probably it was easier that way.

Sonic shook off his thoughts for now, concentrating on watching all the Mobians below. Like ants, he thought, a smile flashing on his face. From above the directions chosen by the single persons looked random and the idea occurred to Sonic that no matter how lost he was, he wouldn't really stick out in this crowd. From above they all seemed lost on where they were going. The hedgehog chuckled.

Yet, there was no trace of Knuckles. Sonic had hoped his friend's crimson fur would be somewhat of an eye catcher, but the mall below was a chaos crawling with colours and _nothing_ stuck out. He sighed and turned away, wondering if they had anything like an information terminal that could make a call-out for him. Parents had to find their little kids that got lost at this messy place someway, didn't they?

The blue hedgehog was still considering a good and entertaining way to call out for Knuckles when he walked back to the elevator, hoping it would also work in the other direction, when he bumped into someone. Apologizing, he was already half past the person when a hand grabbed his arm and held him back.

"Hey kid, shouldn't you be in school?"

Sonic turned back around, his eyes wandering from the hand still holding around his arm to the face of the person it belonged to. He was a rabbit, the small space on his head between his long, hanging ears topped with a dark blue cap, the front of it adorned with a silver star in a circle. He was dressed in an equally blue vest and a belt around his hips holding some kind of pistol. A small lettering on the chest assigned him as a policeman.

"Uh… There's a free day today," Sonic hurriedly said. As long as he had no ideas how long people had to go to school in this time, saying he didn't go to any school maybe wasn't a good idea.

"So? What educational institute do you go to?", the rabbit officer asked, but let go of Sonic.

"Oh… uh…" The blue hedgehog tried to think of some quick excuse, but before he could come up with anything, a female cat in the same uniform as the rabbit joined his side, a smug smile on her anyways rather beautiful face.

"May we see your ID?"

"Umm… Sorry, I gotta juice! See ya!" Deciding he didn't want this to go the way his little head to head with GUN had gone a while back, Sonic span on his heels and broke into a sprint, dodging around stands, shelves and gawking Mobians.

It took the two policemen about three seconds until they realized what was going on. "Hey! Come back here!"

Glancing quickly over his shoulder, Sonic grinned at the side of the duo running after him. Him. Sonic the freaking Hedgehog aka fastest thing on two legs. What a joke.

"Stop immediately! This is the last warning!", the cat shouted.

Sonic chuckled, bracing himself to jump over a small stand selling… some sort of round objects. The moment he leapt, his ears caught a sizzling sound, a little too much resembling the sound a laser shot made going through the air, then something hit his back and his whole body went limp as a feeling like being dunked into a bucket of icy water poured through him. Unable to move and prevent it, his momentum smashed him into the stand, causing it to collapse under the impulse and a vast amount of odd round things for unknown purposes came toppling down on him.

"Ngh!" Sonic tried to struggle to free himself from the wreckage, but his body was a frozen piece of hedgehog popsicle and wouldn't respond.

However, the two police officers had finally caught up with him and now shoved off the stuff that had buried him. "I'm sorry that was necessary," the rabbit apologized and, although angry and actually somewhat afraid of what they'd done to him so easily, Sonic found he sounded somewhat sincere.

"What did you do to me?!", he snapped when he was turned to his back and the rabbit started to search him for… whatever.

The purple cat waved the pistol she was still holding, her face still or yet again wearing that smug smile. "It's called a paralyzer, kid. Very helpful for catching people. How do you like it?"

Sonic decided not to dignify her with an answer, but she didn't appear to be expecting one, anyway.

"I can't find his ID," her colleague announced. He looked down on Sonic again. "Would you give us your name?"

Sonic shook his head. He was clear on that one, mindful of keeping himself from screwing time and space up before they found the way home, and so far the two police officers didn't really classify as new good friends or allies to enlist as help to get home.

"Stubborn, aren't we?", the cat teased, putting her weapon back into the holster on her belt. Sonic felt tempted to stick out his tongue.

The rabbit's look however was still rather soft. "You'll have to come with us to the station. That's what we do with every runaway kid. Resistance is useless. Sorry."

Sonic's body was filling with a very uncomfortable sensation of pins and needles, but at least it was taking the cold away. He still couldn't move and he failed to keep his nervousness about it from his voice in spite of the sarcasm he managed to put into his tone. "I'm really sorry, you'll have to go on this funny trip alone 'cause you freaking paralyzed me!"

"You'll be able to move in a minute again," the rabbit told him. "Don't worry."

Sonic snorted.

The officer just glanced down on him for another moment. "You know, you're quite the runner. You almost escaped us."

"You cheated," the blue hedgehog snapped.

"Nah, no hard feelings, kid." Somehow Sonic thought the rabbit was actually trying to cheer him up. "By the way, have you ever heard of Sonic the Hedgehog? Centuries ago, he and his friends saved our planet from a criminal numerous times. He was also a blue hedgehog that could run fast. Isn't that kinda cool?" The policeman winked at Sonic.

So they did remember him… A warm feeling spread in Sonic's chest. Pride? Happiness at being appreciated? A bit of both, probably.

The hedgehog grinned. "Yeah…" For a short moment, he actually forgot he was a prisoner of some future police with evil paralysing weapons.

* * *

"Alright, kid, get in there." The policeman gestured at the door of a – compared to the rest of the city – rather boring looking house. When Sonic didn't actually comply, he grabbed the blue hedgehog by the shoulders and shoved him in. "I told you resistance is useless, kid."

"Stop calling me 'kid'," Sonic complained while being pushed through a blank, grey-walled corridor and through another door into what looked like a mixture of an office and one of Eggman's command centers. A table looking as if it consisted entirely of a greenish glass sat in the middle of it and behind it sat another uniformed Mobian, a green fox or dog. The wall behind him was covered entirely in half-transparent screens or holograms, or something in between, showing what looked like full streets and public places.

The green-furred policeman ridged an eyebrow. "Who's that?", he addressed his colleagues.

"Caught him strolling around the mall," the cat answered readily. "No ID, doesn't want to say his name."

"Kid should be in school," her partner took over. "Take his fingerprints and keep him here until his parents are found and can bring him back to the educational institution he escaped from."

_Escaped_. Sonic frowned. Sounded more like a prison than a school…

"Alright, kid, take off your glove and place your hand on this surface," the fox-dog ordered.

In reply, Sonic crossed his arms on his chest. "You're violating my Mobian Rights," he said stubbornly.

The three police officers exchanged glances. "His what?", the female cat wondered.

"I guess that was some old-fashioned nonsense they had something like two centuries ago," the green fox answered. "I wonder why they even keep teaching our young this history crap. They're just getting stupid ideas…"

The rabbit officer waved his weapon under Sonic's nose. "Really kid, don't make me use this. At the moment you're arrested as a runaway kid. If you keep talking like that, we'll have to report you and then you got public intelligence on your heels, and I tell you they're not going to sponsor your next birthday party. Just be a smart boy and behave."

To his amusement Sonic found the guy was actually trying to be considerate. Oh well, maybe if he complied the two would go back to their work and leave him alone with this green guy, who, as the hedgehog had already found out didn't hold one of the spooky paralyzers and looking at his round belly certainly wasn't a match for him. So, get rid of the others first.

Making a face and only half feigning it, he pulled off his right glove. "Okay, okay…"

"Atta boy," the cat smiled as Sonic laid his hand on the indicated space in one corner of the glass table.

A bright glow came from the presumed glass around his hand, pulsing a few times and then, without any visible connection or anything the policemen had to do, a part of the holoscreen showed a scan of Sonic's palm and fingers.

"That's actually kinda cool," the blue hedgehog commented, taking his glove back on.

"We're not here to entertain you," the green fox grumbled. "You'll have to wait in a cell until the data base confirmed your identity and you can be transported back to your educational institution."

Sonic grinned inwardly. _You can wait until the chao come home for that_, he thought.

Standing up from behind his desk, the green-furred policeman picked up something that looked like the remote control for a stylish TV to Sonic and waved at his two colleagues to follow him. Taking Sonic's arm to make sure he 'was a smart boy and behaved', the rabbit and cat followed him out of the office, down the rest of the boringly furnished corridor to a thick door. Pulling it open, the fox let the three others walk inside.

Sonic looked around in utter surprise. Had he expected something like iron bars, he'd been pretty wrong. They stood in a room that was about five by twenty meters large. To his left, a slightly glowing, but transparent barrier separated a kind of corridor down to the far end of the room from the rest of it. Mentioned rest that also was divided in smaller sections of about two by three meters by more of the glowing walls.

"Whoa, force fields…" Sonic nodded to himself at the reminder of some of Eggman's infamous creations. Well, it was better than bars in GUN's prison, maybe?

His eyes roamed the room and the odd interpretation of prisons they had at this place while he was shoved down the corridor. It was then that he noticed he was not the only prisoner. In the last cell a single person sat in a corner, his fur a bright shade of red, long spines hanging down from his head, one arm resting in a brightly white sling around his neck, the other, large hand fisted on the floor next to him, looking up at Sonic and the policemen with a distinct one-word-and-I'm-gonna-kill-you expression on his face. Sonic bit down on a grin.

Stopping in front of the force field section next to the one Knuckles was locked in, the green fox pushed a button on the TV remote and the glowing wall between their position and the next free cell shut down. A mock look manifested in the officer's face as he waved for Sonic to walk in. "Sir."

Sonic shrugged, stepping into the blank room and sharply watching the policefox pressing another button to reactivate the cell's force field. "Y'know, you could at least put a sofa or something in here."

The cat laughed. "We'll suggest it," she said in a tone that made clear she wouldn't.

"Hey," Sonic called after the three of them when they walked out.

"What? Starting to regret it already, kid?" The rabbit frowned.

"Nah," Sonic shook his head. "I'm gonna hang here for a while, that's okay. I was just wondering if we can order some lunch. I'm really, really hungry."

In response, the door to the prison room was slammed.

Sonic grinned. "I guess that means no snacks then."

* * *

To be honest, Tails felt a little uneasy walking through the streets of Station Square. This part of the city was, at least during daylight times, almost empty of people. After the sun went down that surely was a completely different matter. Night Babylon was cramped with casinos, bars and night clubs that surely were buzzing with activity at times other places where fast asleep. Now, in bright daylight, the neon signs looked almost misplaced.

Tails slowly walked up to the entrance of Club Rouge, a bar owned by the GUN agent and treasure huntress Rouge the Bat. Just like everything else around, the doors and windows were closed and no-one was to be seen.

Hesitantly Tails reached to knock on the door in lack of a bell to ring. Shifting his weight between his feet and twirling his tails, the fox waited for something to happen. When nothing did, he knocked again, a little harder this time.

Apparently he had finally been noticed, the clangs of high-heels on polished floor could be heard approaching the door before it opened to reveal the club's boss. Dressed in her familiar jumpsuit, flawless make-up and a good deal of heavy, cough-inducing perfume, Rouge raised a brow at the sight of Tails.

"What a surprise. If this isn't the smart little fox boy." She smiled smugly. "You know the club's closed, don't you?"

Tails smiled nervously. "Yeah, of course. Do I look as if I came for that?"

Rouge giggled, looking a lot friendlier all of a sudden. "Point number one for you, cutie. My club offers exquisite music and drinks. I don't think you're in for that. So, what brings a little nerd here?"

"I was looking for Shadow," Tails said, deciding to take the direct approach. "And I was hoping you knew where he is."

Rouge tilted her head. "Consider this your lucky day, kid. While he visits not sparely, he's not exactly regular with things like that. He's behind the house, with Omega keeping him company. You can go in and try your luck, but I'm warning you. He's not in the best mood. Boys and their toys, you know the deal." She shrugged.

Tails stared at her. He totally didn't know what deal she was going on about, but he followed her lead when she gestured him inside, hoping that Shadow wouldn't chuck any Chaos Spears at him.


End file.
